TRE    CENTURY   BIBLE    HANDBOOKS 

The  Religion  of  Israel 

PROE.  A.  a  PEAKE,  D.  D. 


/^,/Q^./  O. 


^^  tl^t  ®l?wlD5fra/  ^ 


PRINCETON,  N.  J. 


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BS  417  .CA6  V.4 

Peake,  Arthur  S.  1865-1929. 

The  religion  of  Israel 


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CENTURY  BIBLE  HANDBOOKS 

General  Editor 
Principal  WALTER  F.'^ADENEY,  M.A.,  D.D. 


THE    RELIGION   OF   ISRAEL 


THE   RELIGION  OF 
ISRAEL 


*      DEC  12  1910 


A 


\/ 


%^/c!^L  SEUV^>^^ 


A.  S.  PEAKE,  M.A.,  D.D. 

PROFESSOR   OF    BIBLICAL    EXEGESIS    IN    THE    UNIVERSITY   OF    MANCHESTER, 

TUTOR   IN   THE   PRIMITIVE   METHODIST  COLLEGE,    MANCHESTER,    AND 

LECTURER    IN    LANCASHIRE   INDEPENDENT  COLLEGE  ;    SOMETIME 

FELLOW   OF    MERTON   COLLEGE,    AND    LECTURER    IN 

MANSFIELD   COLLEGE,    OXFORD 


HODDER   AND   STOUGHTON 

NEW   YORK 

1909 


NOTE 

This  work  is  not  a  Theology  of  the  Old  Testament, 
but  a  History  of  the  Religion  of  Israel.  It  is  concerned 
with  the  development  of  the  religion  as  a  whole,  not 
with  the  growth  of  individual  doctrines.  For  two 
omissions  the  limits  of  space  ar€' responsible.  It  was 
necessary  to  leave  out  a  sketch  of  Semitic  religion,  and 
to  refrain  from  giving  any  but  the  slightest  account  of 
the  religious  institutions  of  Israel. 

A.  S.  P. 


CONTENTS 


CHAP. 

I.    THE    RISE    OF    THE    RELIGION 
II.    THE     SETTLEMENT    IN    CANAAN     AND     TRANS- 
FORMATION   OF    THE    RELIGION    . 

III.  FROM    SAMUEL    TO    ELISHA     . 

IV.  AMOS    AND    HOSEA 
V.    ISAIAH    AND    MICAH 

VI.  THE    DEUTERONOMIC   REFORMATION 

VII.  JEREMIAH    AND    HiS    AGE 

VIII.  THE    EXILE   ..... 

IX.  EZEKIEL  ..... 

X.  THE    SECOND    ISAIAH       . 

XI.  THE    BIRTH    OF   JUDAISM 

XII.  THE    WANING    OF    PROPHECY 

XIII.  SAGES    AND    PSALMISTS 

XIV.  THE    THEOLOGY    OF    JUDAISM 

SELECTED    LITERATURE 
INDEX 


PAGE 
I 

27 
41 

52 
69 

82 

89 

103 

no 

118 

138 
145 

171 


vu 


THE    RELIGION   OF   ISRAEL 

CHAPTER  I 

THE  RISE  OF  THE  RELIGION 

In  the  strict  sense  of  the  term,  the  religion  of  Israel 
came  into  existence  with  Moses.  But  no  religion  can 
make  an  entirely  new  beginning.  Every  religion  must 
link  itself  on  to  the  past,  taking  up  into  itself  older  cus- 
toms and  beliefs.  Some  of  these  may  be  assimilated 
without  difficulty.  But  others  will  be  directly  contrary 
to  its  genius.  Such,  however,  is  the  conservatism  of  the 
religious  instinct  that  practices  belonging  to  a  lower  type 
of  religion  will  survive  long  after  the  religion  out  of 
which  they  sprang  has  given  place  to  a  higher.  These 
incompatible  elements  may  long  exist  side  by  side, 
though  logic  at  last  inevitably  accomplishes  its  work,  and 
the  inharmonious  survival  must  be  either  transformed  or 
eliminated.  When,  therefore,  the  Hebrews,  under  the 
leadership  of  Moses,  entered  on  a  new  stage  of  religious 

A 


2        THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

development  they  did  not  make  a  complete  breach  with 
the  past.  It  was  in  the  name,  not  of  a  new  God,  but  of 
the  God  of  their  fathers,  that  Moses  lit  the  flame  of  hope 
in  the  crushed  and  desponding  slaves  who  toiled  in  the 
brickfields  of  Egypt.  And  behind  what  we  call  the 
patriarchal  period  there  lay  a  long  history  which  left  its 
mark  permanently  on  the  religion  of  Israel.  The  Hebrews 
belonged  to  that  racial  group  which  we  are  in  the 
habit  of  calling  the  Semitic  peoples.  And  when  they 
emerged  into  a  distinct  nationality,  they  still  retained 
much  of  the  common  stock  of  Semitic  custom  and  belief. 
And  this  in  its  turn  went  back  largely  to  a  type  essenti- 
ally savage.  Many  of  these  savage  elements  persisted 
into  the  religion  of  Israel  and  Judaism,  where  they  are 
found  in  connection  with  lofty  spiritual  conceptions,  with 
which  they  are  altogether  out  of  harmony.  They  can  be 
explained  only  as  relics  of  an  extremely  ancient  way  of 
looking  at  things,  the  almost  indestructible  survivals  of 
primitive  religion.  It  must  of  course  be  recognised  that 
the  higher  religion  of  Israel  did  not  consciously  tolerate 
heathen  elements,  but  elements  which  in  their  origin 
were  heathen  survived  and  received  a  spiritual  interpre- 
tation. It  is,  unfortunately,  impossible  in  our  space  to 
sketch  the  Semitic  background  to  the  Hebrew  religion. 
It  made  itself  felt  especially  in  the  ceremonial  institutions, 
such  as  sacrifice,  circumcision,  and  the  laws  of  unclean- 


THE    RISE    OF    THE    RELIGION       3 

ness.     We  must   pass   on  at   once  to  the   religion  of 
Israel  in  the  strict  sense. 

The  very  difficult  historical  problems  raised  in  con- 
nection with  the  residence  of  the  Hebrews  in  Egypt  and 
the  Exodus  must  here  be  completely  passed  by,  and 
their  rehgious  significance  alone  be  taken  into  account. 
The  truth  of  the  story  that  they  were  slaves  in  Egypt  is 
confirmed  by  the  consideration  that  no  people  would 
invent  the  fiction  that  it  had  descended  from  a  horde  of 
bondsmen.  It  is  natural  that  many  should  have  attri- 
buted to  the  stay  of  the  Hebrews  in  Egypt  much  in  the 
religion  of  Israel.  It  is,  however,  antecedently  improb- 
able that  the  mass  of  the  people  should  have  derived 
anything  in  this  way  from  the  Egyptians,  with  whose 
religion  they  would  not  be  brought  much  in  contact.  It 
is  otherwise  with  Moses,  who,  if  we  can  accept  the 
romantic  story  of  his  early  life,  would  be  familiar  with 
the  doctrines  and  rites  of  the  religion  of  Egypt.  But 
conscious  borrowing  in  his  case  is  very  unlikely.  Re- 
ligion inspired  the  movement  which  freed  Israel  from 
the  yoke  of  Egypt,  and  therefore  from  the  outset  the 
religion  of  Israel  was  antagonistic  to  the  religion  of 
Egypt ;  it  is  accordingly  much  more  likely  that  Egyptian 
elements  were  deliberately  rejected  by  Moses.  This 
does  not  preclude  the  possibility  of  unconscious  in- 
debtedness, but  the  best  Old  Testament  scholars  agree 


4        THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

with  competent  Egyptologists,  that  an  examination  of 
the  religion  of  Israel  reveals  no  traces  of  Egyptian 
influence  worth  speaking  of.  The  worship  of  the 
golden  calf  should  not  be  so  interpreted.  The  Egyptians 
worshipped  living  animals,  and  Aaron's  words,  "  This  is 
thy  God,  O  Israel,  which  brought  thee  up  out  of  the 
land  of  Egypt,"  would  be  very  inappropriate  if  spoken 
of  an  Egyptian  deity. 

It  is  from  Moses  that  the  religion  of  Israel  may  be 
said  to  have  derived  its  origin.  On  this  all  the  four 
main  sources  from  which  the  Pentateuch  has  been  com- 
piled are  agreed.  The  two  great  convictions  which  he 
stamped  into  the  consciousness  of  his  people  were  these  : 
Yahweh  is  the  God  of  Israel ;  Israel  is  the  people  of 
Yahweh.  With  these  great  truths  he  inspired  these 
downtrodden  and  despairing  slaves  with  a  new  hope  and 
with  a  sense  of  national  unity.  He  knit  by  the  power 
of  religion  the  loose  and  disorganised  elements  into  a 
firmly  consolidated  people,  conscious  of  itself  and 
dimly  conscious  of  its  destiny.  They  were  one  people 
for  they  had  one  God,  who  had  chosen  them  to  be 
peculiarly  His  own.  This  new  conception  of  their 
dignity  as  the  people  of  Yahweh  led  them  to  expect  and 
strive  for  a  position  worthy  of  their  high  destiny. 
Moses  is  the  supreme  figure  in  the  history  of  Israel  and 
its  religion,  for  he  created  the  national  consciousness 


THE    RISE    OF    THE    RELIGION       5 

and  linked  it  inseparably  with  a  great  religious  idea 
capable  of  immense  enrichment.  This  conviction  of  its 
election  by  Yahweh  remained  throughout  the  national 
history  permanent  and  indestructible.  The  indissoluble 
union  of  the  national  with  the  religious  consciousness 
was  at  once  the  strength  and  the  weakness  of  the 
religion.  It  was  its  strength,  for  the  religion  gained  in 
intensity  because  the  national  was  taken  into  the  religious, 
while  the  identification  of  religion  and  patriotism  caused 
the  nation  and  the  religion  to  share  in  the  aggrandise- 
ment of  each  other,  and  bound  in  mutual  help  two  of 
the  strongest  passions  of  human  nature.  But  while 
religion  consecrated  and  helped  forward  the  unification 
and  development  of  the  nation,  and  these  in  their  turn 
raised  the  prestige  of  the  religion,  this  proved  ultimately 
the  fatal  weakness  of  the  latter.  For  when  the  time 
came  for  the  advance  from  a  national  to  a  universal 
religion,  the  racial  element  proved  too  strong  for  it  to 
be  made.  It  is  none  the  less  true  that  the  religion 
could  have  reached  its  high  development  only  through 
union  with  the  national  idea,  and  for  this  reason  Moses 
is  pre-eminent  because  he  made  it  possible. 

But  this  union  of  nation  and  religion  by  no  means 
explains  why  the  religion  of  Israel  became  what  we  know 
it  in  history  to  have  been.  It  was  common  enough  for 
a  people  to  have  its  own  God.     The  problem  is  to  ex- 


6        THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

plain  why  the  religion  of  the  peoples  allied  to  Israel, 
such  as  Moab  and  Edom,  never  rose  above  a  quite  ele- 
mentary stage,  while  the  religion  of  Israel  reached  the 
development  we  find  reflected  in  the  loftiest  parts  of  the 
Old  Testament.  We  need  not  deny  that  in  Israel  a 
higher  receptivity  was  to  be  found,  which  justified  its 
selection  as  the  vehicle  of  revelation.  But  it  may  be 
doubted  whether  this  was  at  all  considerable.  Are  we, 
then,  to  find  our  answer  in  the  superiority  of  the  national 
God  of  Israel,  or,  to  speak  according  to  our  modern 
habit,  in  the  higher  conception  of  God?  The  religion 
of  Israel  was  the  religion  of  Yahweh,  and  naturally  the 
question  arises  whether  the  name  gives  us  a  clue  to  the 
explanation.  The  antiquity  of  the  name  Yahweh  is  just 
now  a  matter  of  keen  controversy.  It  is  thought  by 
some  that  the  name  was  known  to  the  Kenites,  and 
there  are  several  points  which  suggest  this.  Still  there 
are  difficulties  in  the  way  of  this  suggestion  which  must 
not  be  overlooked.  Some  Assyriologists  have  asserted 
that  the  name  was  well  known  a  long  time  before  Moses 
in  Babylonia  and  Assyria.  At  present  the  evidence 
must  be  regarded  as  indecisive,  though  it  is  by  no  means 
improbable  that  it  was  at  one  time  more  widely  diffused 
than  it  came  to  be  later. 

The  question  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  word  Yahweh 
is  very  difficult.     In  the  first  place  we  have  to  remember 


THE    RISE    OF    THE    RELIGION       7 

the  possibility,  and  perhaps  the  probability,  that  if  the 
name  was  very  ancient,  and  centuries  or  thousands  of 
years  earlier  than  the  time  of  Moses,  its  meaning  may 
be  altogether  lost.  It  is  a  question  whether  we  should 
explain  it  from  Hebrew  at  all.  It  may  have  originated 
in  a  language  in  which  it  would  bear  an  altogether  dif- 
ferent meaning  from  what  it  would  bear  in  Hebrew. 
But  even  if  we  derived  it  from  Hebrew,  we  have  still 
numerous  possibilities.  In  form  the  word  is  a  third 
person  singular,  but  it  is  uncertain  whether  it  belongs  to 
the  kal  or  the  hiphil  conjugation,  that  is  to  say,  whether 
it  expresses  the  simple  idea  of  the  verb,  or  whether  it  is 
a  causative.  For  example,  if  we  connect  it  with  the  verb 
meaning  to  be^  we  are  still  uncertain  whether  it  means 
"he  who  /V,"  or  "he  who  causes  to  be.^''  It  is,  however, 
by  no  means  certain  that  the  name  was  derived  from 
the  verb  that  means  to  be  at  all.  It  may  be  connected 
with  a  verb  which  means  "to  fall."  And  here  there 
are  two  possible  suggestions.  The  thought  may  be  of 
Yahweh  as  a  storm-God  who  casts  down  rain  and 
lightning,  snow  and  hail,  upon  the  earth.  This  would 
be  in  harmony  with  much  that  we  find  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. In  the  revelation  at  Sinai  we  read  that  on  the 
morning  of  the  third  day  "there  were  thunders  and 
lightnings,  and  a  thick  cloud  upon  the  mount,  and  the 
voice  of  a  trumpet  exceeding  loud,"  and  a  Uttle  later  we 


8        THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

read,  "And  Mount  Sinai  was  altogether  on  smoke, 
because  the  Lord  descended  upon  it  in  fire;  and  the 
smoke  thereof  ascended  as  the  smoke  of  a  furnace,  and 
the  whole  mount  quaked  greatly."  When  Yahweh 
makes  a  covenant  with  Abraham  we  read,  "  And  it  came 
to  pass,  that,  when  the  sun  went  down,  and  it  was  dark, 
behold  a  smoking  furnace,  and  a  flaming  torch  that 
passed  between  these  pieces."  In  the  Song  of  Deborah 
we  learn  how  when  Yahweh  came  from  His  Edomite 
home  He  was  accompanied  by  storm  and  earthquake. 
In  the  1 8th  Psalm  the  poet  describes  how  Yahweh 
came  forth  to  deliver  him.  The  passage  is  too  long  to 
quote,  but  earthquake,  fire  and  smoke,  the  wind  and 
darkness,  the  thick  clouds  that  were  dispersed  at  the 
brightness  of  His  presence,  hailstones  and  coals  of  fire 
and  the  fiery  shafts  of  His  lightning,  are  the  accompani- 
ments of  the  theophany.  Similarly,  in  the  song  of 
Habakkuk  we  read  how  the  appearance  of  Yahweh  is 
accompanied  by  the  pestilence  and  the  earthquake,  the 
lightning  and  the  tempest.  So  it  is  characteristic  that 
when  Yahweh  answers  Job  it  is  out  of  the  roaring  of  the 
storm.  When  Elijah  goes  to  seek  Him  at  His  ancient 
seat  of  Horeb  we  are  not  surprised  to  be  told  of  the 
mighty  wind  that  rent  the  mountains  and  broke  the 
rocks,  of  the  earthquake  and  the  fire,  for  it  was  Yahweh's 
manner  thus  to  manifest  His  presence.     What  is  perhaps 


THE    RISE    OF    THE    RELIGION       9 

more  surprising  is  that  the  narrator  should  insist  that 
Yahweh  was  not  in  any  of  these  elemental  phenomena, 
they  were  but  the  harbingers  of  His  coming.  It  was  in 
the  still  small  voice  that  He  was  revealed,  or,  to  take  the 
literal  rendering,  "the  sound  of  a  gentle  whisper."  He 
is  represented  as  dwelling  in  the  radiant  light,  shrouded 
in  thick  darkness  and  hurling  the  lightning  to  its  mark. 
He  rides  swiftly  upon  the  thunder-cloud  and  flies  upon 
the  wings  of  the  wind.  When  He  comes  forth  to  dis- 
comfit His  enemies  He  takes  His  war-bow  in  His  hand 
and  the  lightning  flashes  are  His  fiery  arrows,  but  when 
the  judgment  has  been  executed  He  lays  aside  His  bow 
and  sets  it  in  the  clouds,  so  that  the  rainbow  is  the  token 
that  He  is  reconciled  to  man.  Now  all  this  evidence 
forcibly  suggests  that  the  Israelites  thought  of  Yahweh 
as  manifesting  Himself  especially  in  storm,  so  that  the 
interpretation  of  Yahweh  as  meaning  one  who  casts  down 
the  rain  and  snow,  the  hail  and  the  lightning,  to  the 
earth,  finds  no  little  support  from  the  Old  Testament 
representations.  Yet  we  must  beware  of  describing 
Him  as  a  storm-God,  since,  as  Robertson  Smith  has 
pointed  out,  the  Semites  did  not  regard  their  deities  as 
presiding  over  separate  departments  of  Nature.  Others, 
however,  who  also  translate  "  He  who  causes  to  fall," 
think  that  the  meaning  is  " overth rower  "  or  "destroyer." 
The  thought  is,  then,  that  Yahweh  overthrows  cities  or 


CO      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

armies.  No  doubt  this  suggestion  finds  a  measure  of 
support  in  some  Old  Testament  passages,  but  it  does 
not  grow  out  of  them  so  naturally  as  the  former.  Others, 
again,  think  that  the  word  is  connected  with  a  verb 
meaning  "  to  breathe "  or  "  to  blow."  The  thought 
would  in  that  case  be  that  He  is  a  wind-God,  who 
might  manifest  Himself  not  only  in  the  tempest,  but  in 
the  gentle  rustling  of  trees,  so  that  the  sound  of  march- 
ing in  the  tops  of  the  mulberry  trees  would  suggest  that 
He  had  passed  on  to  battle  before  His  people.  This, 
however,  is  closely  connected  in  essential  meaning  with 
the  conception  of  Yahweh  as  a  storm-God. 

If  we  connect  the  meaning  with  the  verb  "  to  be  "  we 
have  still  several  possible  interpretations.  We  may  take 
it  as  a  causative,  hence  some  have  found  in  it  the  mean- 
ing, "  He  who  causes  to  be,"  that  is,  the  Creator.  The 
verb,  however,  does  not  mean  "  to  be  "  so  much  as  "  to 
become"  or  "to  come  to  pass,"  so  that  if  we  adopt 
this  view  we  should  m.ore  probably  explain  the  name  to 
mean  "  He  who  brings  His  purpose  to  pass,"  or  "  He 
who  accomplishes  what  He  has  promised."  It  is,  how- 
ever, more  probable,  perhaps,  that  we  should  not  treat 
it  as  a  causative,  since  in  the  words  translated  "  I  am, 
that  I  am,"  and  similarly  in  the  phrase,  "  I  am  hath 
sent  me  unto  you,"  we  have  our  oldest  explanation  of 
the  meaning  of  the   term.     Of  course   this   does   not 


THE    RISE    OF   THE    RELIGION     ii 

necessarily  prove  that  such  was  the  original  meaning  of 
the  term.  It  would  be  by  no  means  unexampled  in  the 
religion  of  Israel  for  an  older  term  to  be  taken  up  and  a 
newer  and  a  fuller  meaning  given  to  it.  All  that  is  in- 
tended is  that  this  was  the  meaning  given  to  the  name 
in  the  religion  of  revelation.  But  we  are  by  no  means  at 
the  end  of  our  quest  when  we  have  decided  to  adopt 
this  significance,  for  the  meaning  of  the  word  translated 
"  I  am  "  is  itself  quite  uncertain.  To  us  the  most  natural 
suggestion  of  "  I  am"  is  the  self-existent  one.  But  the 
Hebrew  religion  was  not  a  religion  of  abstract  speculation. 
It  did  not  concern  itself  with  metaphysics,  and  such  an 
idea  as  the  self-existent  one  would  have  been  very 
foreign  to  its  mode  of  thought.  It  is  more  probable 
that  we  should  lay  the  emphasis  on  moral  than  on 
metaphysical  character.  Moreover,  the  use  of  the  im- 
perfect tense  makes  it  probable  that  in  accordance  with 
the  general  Hebrew  idiom  we  should  represent  the 
Hebrew  by  the  English  future,  and  instead  of  "  I  am, 
that  I  am,"  translate  "  I  will  be  what  I  will  be."  The 
phrase  then  contains  a  great  religious  truth.  Yahweh 
does  not  define  what  He  will  be,  since  no  human  language 
is  capable  of  expressing  all  that  He  will  prove  to  be  to 
His  people.  This  is  much  more  likely  than  any  meta- 
physical truth  to  have  been  revealed  to  Israel,  the  strength 
of  whose  genius  lay  on  the  religious  rather  than  on  the 


12      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

speculative  side.  Accordingly  we  may  conclude  that 
the  sense  which  the  word  bore  in  Hebrew  religion  is 
best  interpreted  for  us  in  Exodus  iii.  13-15,  where  God 
reveals  Himself  as  Yahweh  and  declares  that  His  name 
is  "  I  will  be  what  I  will  be."  If  so  we  ought  to  trans- 
late Yahweh  not  "  He  is,"  but  "  He  will  be."  The  word 
is  therefore  incomplete  and  needs  something  to  be  sup- 
plied, but  it  is  in  the  very  incompleteness  that  the 
religious  suggestiveness  largely  resides.  For  it  sets  the 
man  who  utters  it  thinking  what  Yahweh  will  be.  He 
may  have  gone  into  battle  with  the  name  of  his  God  on 
his  lips  meaning,  "He  will  be  with  us."  And  indeed 
in  all  the  difficulties  of  life  there  would  come  to  him 
the  great  assurance,  He  will  be  all  that  I  need,  whatever 
He  has  promised  to  be  to  His  people  and  more  than  all 
He  has  been  able  to  promise. 

From  this  survey  it  is  clear  that  we  cannot  build  with 
any  confidence  on  the  meaning  of  the  name  Yahweh. 
We  should  probably  accept  the  view  that  the  moral 
character  attributed  to  Yahweh  from  the  earliest  period 
was  the  differentiating  element  which  made  possible  the 
subsequent  high  development.  The  presence  of  this 
ethical  element  in  the  religion  as  founded  by  Moses  is 
disputed  by  some,  and  cannot  be  strictly  proved.  But 
it  is  at  least  highly  probable.  It  is  thus  that  we  best 
can  account  for  the  ethical  monotheism  of  the  prophets  : 


THE    RISE    OF    THE    RELIGION     13 

it  must  have  had  its  roots  in  the  earliest  history  of  the 
religion.  And  this  is  confirmed  by  the  fact  that  the 
prophets  themselves  are  conscious  that  they  are  not 
innovators  ;  their  conception  of  Yahweh  agrees  with  that 
held  by  Israel  from  the  first.  To  prove  the  ethical  nature 
of  Yahweh,  scholars  have  often  pointed  to  His  close 
association  with  the  administration  of  justice.  Budde 
has  recently  challenged  this  view.  He  argues  that  while 
morality  may  create  law,  law  cannot  create  morality. 
Further,  Yahweh's  function  in  this  matter  is  not  moral 
but  intellectual.  He  is  called  in,  not  to  express  His 
will  that  the  criminal  should  be  punished,  for  that  is 
well  understood.  It  is  rather  His  duty,  as  one  who 
possesses  Divine  knowledge,  to  indicate  by  the  oracle  who 
the  criminal  is.  And  similar  oracles  were  given  in  other 
religions,  which  yet  did  not  become  ethical  religions. 
Accordingly  Budde,  while  asserting  the  ethical  character 
of  the  primitive  religion  of  Israel,  refuses  to  explain  it 
by  the  ethical  conception  formed  of  Yahweh.  He  argues 
at  length  for  the  view,  previously  put  forward  by  Stade, 
that  Yahweh  was  originally  the  God  of  the  Kenites, 
among  whom  Moses  lived  with  Jethro  the  priest.  In- 
spired with  the  conviction  that  Yahweh  would  rescue 
Israel  from  Egypt,  Moses  induced  his  people  to  accept 
Him  as  their  God.  They  did  so,  and  the  Exodus  was 
successfully  accomplished.     Then  at  Sinai  Israel  entered 


14      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

into  covenant  relations  with  its  new  Deity.  Thus  Israel 
and  the  Kenites  both  worshipped  the  same  Deity.  But 
the  relation  to  Yahweh  was  altogether  different  in  the 
two  cases.  Yahweh  was  to  the  Kenites  simply  what 
Chemosh  was  to  Moab.  The  relationship  between  them 
was  purely  natural.  But  in  the  case  of  Israel  it  was 
otherwise.  The  God  of  another  people  and  not  their 
own  had  delivered  them,  and  they  had  freely  chosen 
this  God  to  be  theirs.  They  were  bound  to  Him  by 
the  closest  ties  of  gratitude.  Thus  there  was  an  ethical 
element  present  in  the  relationship  between  Yahweh 
and  Israel,  such  as  was  to  be  found  in  the  case  of  no 
other  people  and  its  God,  and  in  this  relationship  Budde 
finds  the  secret  of  the  ethical  character  of  the  religion 
of  Israel.  His  view,  however,  is  open  to  criticism.  It 
is  by  no  means  certain  that  Yahweh  was  a  new  God  to 
the  Hebrews  in  the  time  of  Moses.  It  is  true  that  both 
the  Pentateuchal  documents  commonly  designated  by 
the  symbols  E  and  P  represent  the  name  of  Yahweh  as 
unknown  to  their  ancestors.  But  P  is  so  late  that  its 
evidence  can  hardly  be  taken  into  account,  and  against 
E  we  can  set  the  document  known  as  J,  which  represents 
the  name  as  in  use  from  the  earliest  period  and  as  con- 
stantly employed  by  the  patriarchs.  Further,  while  E 
represents  the  name  Yahweh  as  unknown,  it  regards 
Yahweh  Himself  as  the  God  of  the  patriarchs,  though 


THE. RISE    OF    THE    RELIGION     15 

known  to  them  as  Elohim.  And  it  may  be  questioned 
whether  Moses  would  have  been  more  successful  in 
appealing  to  the  Hebrews  in  the  name  of  a  hitherto  un- 
known God  than  in  telling  them  that  the  God  of  their 
fathers  had  taken  pity  on  their  distress.  That  Sinai 
was  thought  to  be  Yahweh's  home  is  clear  enough  from 
many  passages,  and  that  the  Kenites  were  His  worshippers 
is  by  no  means  improbable.  It  is  possible,  however, 
that  He  may  have  been  worshipped  by  several  tribes 
in  that  neighbourhood,  and  that  the  ancestors  of  the 
Hebrews  who  were  delivered  from  Egypt  may  have  been 
among  them.  But  whatever  be  the  ultimate  verdict  on 
these  disputable  points  of  Budde's  theory,  it  is  at  any 
rate  clear  that  the  relation  the  Hebrews  sustained  to 
Yahweh  was  believed  to  rest  on  a  free  choice  on  His 
part  met  with  free  acceptance  on  their  own.  He  was  their 
God  not  by  nature  but  by  covenant.  And  the  Exodus 
assured  them  at  once  of  His  might  and  His  good  will, 
and  united  them  to  Him  by  the  strongest  bonds  of  grati- 
tude. And  when  we  inquire  as  to  the  truth  of  this 
belief,  we  are  safest  even  on  the  ground  of  history  if  we 
share  the  conviction  of  Moses  that  we  have  to  do  with  a 
direct  revelation  made  to  him  by  God  Himself.  Thus 
we  have  a  cause  adequate  to  the  great  tasks  it  accom- 
plished, the  creation  of  a  national  consciousness,  the 
deliverance  from  Egypt,  and  the  birth  of  the  religion 


i6      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

of  Israel.     It  was  thus  a  real  choice  of  Israel  by  God  to 
be  the  vehicle  of  His  revelation. 

How  Yahweh  was  conceived  in  the  earliest  period  of 
Israel's  religion  we  have  little  knowledge.  The  great- 
ness of  His  power  had  been  proved  by  the  deliverance 
from  Egypt,  and  this  had  equally  manifested  His  favour 
towards  Israel.  And  since  this  relationship  was  for 
Yahweh  not  a  necessity  of  nature  but  an  act  of  choice, 
it  must  have  led  to  a  deeper  consideration  of  His  char- 
acter, and  a  more  anxious  desire  to  do  His  will.  And 
this  all  the  more,  because  stress  seems  to  have  been 
laid  on  the  sterner  side  of  His  character.  He  dwelt  on 
Sinai,  and  manifested  Himself  especially  in  the  thunder- 
storm. Although  we  should  not  speak  of  Him  as  a 
storm-God,  elemental  phenomena  are  the  usual  ac- 
companiments of  a  theophany  in  the  Old  Testament. 
Further,  He  is  quick  to  resent  and  punish  any  violation 
of  His  holiness;  thus,  the  men  of  Beth-shemesh  are 
smitten  for  lack  of  reverence  towards  the  ark,  and 
Uzzah  for  incautiously  touching  it.  His  action  seems 
at  times  to  be  regarded  as  unaccountable.  No  reason 
is  given  why  His  wrath  should  be  kindled  against  Israel 
when  He  incited  David  to  number  the  people.  And  in 
I.  Sam.  xxvi.  19,  David  seems  to  think  that  Saul's  per- 
secution of  him  may  be  due  to  Yahweh's  similarly  un- 
motived  prompting  of  Saul  against  him.     It  was  natural 


THE    RISE    OF    THE    RELIGION     17 

that  Yahweh  should  delight  in  war.  War  was  looked 
upon  as  a  sacred  function,  and  warriors  as  consecrated 
to  the  service  of  Yahweh.  He  bids  His  people  go  forth 
to  battle,  puts  their  enemies  to  flight  before  them,  often 
pronounces  the  ban  or  decree  of  extermination  upon 
them.  So  much  are  Israel's  wars  His  wars,  that  we 
even  read  of  the  Book  of  the  Wars  of  Yahweh.  It 
was  a  fortunate  thing  for  the  religion  of  Israel  that  no 
goddess  was  conceived  to  stand  by  His  side,  for  thus 
occasion  would  have  been  given,  as  in  so  many  other 
cults,  for  the  inrush  of  degrading  immorality. 

While  Yahweh  was  originally  thought  of  as  resident 
on  His  own  mountain,  He  was  not  believed  to  be  con- 
fined to  it.  He  smote  the  Egyptians  with  plagues  and 
led  forth  the  Hebrews,  and  afterwards  fought  for  them 
in  Palestine,  which  soon  came  to  be  regarded  as  His 
own  proper  home.  Still,  the  other  view  long  survived  ; 
we  meet  with  it  in  the  song  of  Deborah,  and  even  Elijah 
in  his  despondency  goes  to  Horeb  to  find  Him.  Not 
only  was  Yahweh  conceived  as  possessing  a  local  habita- 
tion, but  corresponding  to  this  an  external  form.  In 
one  very  anthropomorphic  passage  we  read  that  Moses 
and  Aaron,  Nadab  and  Abihu,  and  seventy  of  the  elders 
of  Israel  went  up  the  mountain  and  beheld  God  and  did 
eat  and  drink  (Exod.  xxiv.  9-1 1).  Even  in  Exod.  xxxiii. 
20-23,  where  it  is  said  that  no  man  can  see  God's  face 

B 


i8     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

and  live,  Yahweh  covers  Moses  with  His  hand  while  He 
passes  by  him,  and  then  removing  His  hand  permits 
him  to  see  His  back.  How  old  the  conception  is  that 
Yahweh  dwells  in  heaven  is  disputed.  Some  consider  it 
to  be  quite  late,  but  it  is  found  in  passages  that  there 
seems  to  be  no  reason  for  regarding  as  late.  Of  course, 
we  have  no  literary  attestation  for  it  so  early  as  the 
time  of  Moses,  and  it  may  be  a  later  development.  It 
is,  however,  convenient  to  speak  of  it  here.  The  refer- 
ence in  Deborah's  song  to  the  stars  from  heaven  fighting 
against  Sisera  (Judges  v.  20)  should  not,  perhaps,  be 
pressed.  But  the  references  to  Yahweh' s  coming  down 
to  see  the  city  and  tower  (Gen.  xi.  5),  to  His  raining 
brimstone  and  fire  on  Sodom  and  Gomorrah  from 
heaven  (Gen.  xix.  24),  to  the  ladder  which  reached  from 
earth  to  heaven,  with  Yahweh  standing  at  its  head  (Gen. 
xxviii.  12),  to  Yahweh's  descent  on  the  summit  of  Mount 
Sinai  (Exod.  xix.  11,  20,  xxxiv.  5),  all  testify  that  this 
belief  was  held  in  Israel  at  a  quite  early  period.  At  a 
comparatively  early  period,  also,  we  have  Micaiah's  vision 
of  Yahweh  sitting  on  His  throne  with  the  host  of  heaven 
standing  by  Him  (I.  Kings  xxii.  19).  Gunkel,  who  ad- 
duces these  and  other  passages,  says  that  the  neigh- 
bouring peoples  had  this  belief,  and  the  Canaanites 
certainly  long  before  the  Israelites ;  it  would  be  strange, 
therefore,  if  it  was  not  known  to  ancient  Israel,  though 


THE    RISE    OF    THE    RELIGION     19 

it  is  true  it  became  a  prominent  article  of  belief  only  in 
the  later  period. 

We  are,  however,  on  secure  ground  when  we  connect 
with  Moses  the  ark  of  Yahweh.  It  is  possible,  but  by  no 
means  certain,  that  this  was  older  than  the  time  of 
Moses.  It  is  highly  probable  that  the  earliest  documents 
of  the  Hexateuch  contained  a  narrative  of  its  construc- 
tion, though  if  so  this  has  been  displaced  by  the  account 
of  P.  It  was  a  portable  box  of  acacia  wood,  perhaps 
without  the  golden  plating  or  cherubim  ascribed  to  it  in 
P.  It  was  the  most  sacred  object  in  ancient  Israel,  for 
it  was  identified  in  the  closest  way  with  Yahweh  Himself, 
who  was  supposed  to  be  actually  present  in  it.  Thus  in 
Num.  X.  35,  36,  we  read  that  when  the  ark  set  forward 
Moses  said,  "  Rise  up,  Yahweh,  and  let  Thine  enemies  be 
scattered,"  and  when  it  rested  he  said,  "  Return,  Yahweh, 
to  the  ten  thousands  of  the  thousands  of  Israel."  The 
whole  story  of  the  fortunes  of  the  ark  in  the  Books  of 
Samuel  reflects  the  same  conception.  It  is  taken  to  the 
field  of  battle,  and  inspires  the  Israelites  with  confidence 
of  victory,  while  the  Philistines  are  dismayed  at  the 
thought  that  God  had  come  into  the  camp,  and  fight 
with  the  courage  of  desperation.  When  the  Philistines 
have  captured  the  ark  it  works  them  nothing  but  mischief. 
When  the  men  of  Beth-She  mesh  are  smitten  they  say, 
"  Who  can  stand  before  Yahweh,  this  holy  God  ?  and  to 


20     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

whom  shall  He  go  up  from  us?"  clearly  regarding 
Yahweh  Himself  as  present  in  the  ark.  On  a  later 
occasion  Yahweh  is  said  to  have  broken  forth  upon 
Uzzah,  where  also  there  is  the  idea  of  Yahweh's  energy  as 
resident  in  the  ark.  So  David's  dancing  before  the  ark 
is  spoken  of  as  a  dancing  before  Yahweh.  In  the  same 
way  the  wonder-working  power  of  the  ark  at  the  crossing 
of  the  Jordan  and  the  capture  of  Jericho  is  to  be 
explained.  What,  then,  constituted  the  peculiar  sanctity 
of  the  ark,  and  its  identification  with  Yahweh  ?  A  box 
has  ordinarily  no  importance  in  itself;  its  importance 
consists  in  what  it  contains.  The  explanation  that  the 
sanctity  of  the  ark  consisted  in  the  fact  that  it  contained 
the  stone  tablets  on  which  the  Ten  Commandments  were 
written  is  unsatisfactory.  For  this  does  not  explain  the 
universal  belief  of  the  ancient  Hebrews  that  the  ark  was 
a  dwelling-place  of  Yahweh  Himself.  Many  scholars 
beUeve  that  the  ark  contained  one  or  two  sacred  stones, 
perhaps  meteoric  in  origin,  in  which  Yahweh's  presence 
was  supposed  to  be  manifested.  Such  a  survival  of 
fetishism  would  be  parallel  to  Mohammed's  incorpora- 
tion in  his  religion  of  the  Black  Stone  of  the  Kaaba. 
This  would  be  in  harmony  with  the  importance  attached 
to  sacred  stones  in  Semitic  religion  and  In  the  religion 
of  the  Hebrews ;  it  would  account  for  the  identification 
of  the  ark  with  Yahweh,  and  for  the  substitution  of  the 


THE    RISE    OF    THE    RELIGION     21 

theory  that  the  stones  were  the  tables  of  the  Law,  when 
the  original  gross  conception  could  no  longer  be 
harmonised  with  more  refined  religious  sentiment.  On 
the  other  hand  it  lies  open  to  the  objection  that  it  is 
difficult  to  think  of  Moses  as  countenancing  such  a 
superstition,  and  placing  it  in  the  centre  of  the  religion. 
Moreover,  while  the  evidence  for  the  view  that  the 
stones  were  the  tables  of  the  Law  is  late  (Deut.  x.  1-5), 
it  may  possibly  rest  on  the  older  sources.  The  later 
history  of  the  ark  is  quite  obscure.  The  prophets  ignore 
it  as  a  rule,  and  Jer.  iii.  16  speaks  of  the  time  when  it 
shall  no  more  be  mentioned  or  remembered.  It  may 
have  disappeared  before  the  destruction  of  the  Temple  by 
Nebuchadnezzar,  perhaps  captured  in  some  invasion,  or 
fallen  to  pieces  through  age.  It  is  not  mentioned  among 
the  Temple  spoils  carried  to  Babylon,  and  was  not  in  the 
Second  Temple.  A  difficulty  is  raised  by  the  double 
conception  that  Yahweh  dwelt  in  Sinai  and  that  He 
resided  in  the  ark.  It  was  solved  by  the  statement  that 
while  Yahweh  Himself  would  not,  in  consequence  of  the 
sin  of  Israel,  go  with  them,  He  promised  that  His  Angel 
or  His  Presence,  not  quite  to  be  identified  with  Yahweh, 
but  yet  not  readily  distinguishable  from  Him,  should  go 
with  them,  and,  following  this,  we  have  the  instruction 
to  Moses  to  make  the  ark,  the  intention,  no  doubt,  being 
thus  to  secure  the  fulfilment  of  Yahweh's  promise.     The 


22      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

Tent  of  Meeting  pitched  outside  the  camp,  of  which 
Joshua  was  the  keeper,  was  apparently  the  home  of  the 
ark,  to  which  Moses  went  to  consult  Yahweh. 

This  brings  us  to  the  question  whether  we  are  justi- 
fied in  ascribing  the  Decalogue  in  Exod.  xx.  to  Moses. 
We  have  another  version  in  Deut.  v.  characterised  by 
important  differences.  These  make  it  unlikely  that  the 
present  form  in  either  of  these  chapters  can  be  due  to 
Moses.  But  they  may  be  reasonably  accounted  for  by 
the  supposition  of  subsequent  expansion  of  originally 
very  brief  commandments.  That  they  were  brief  is  sug- 
gested by  the  title,  "  The  Ten  Words,"  which  is  given  to 
them.  A  much  more  serious  difficulty  is  created  by  the 
apparent  existence  of  another  Decalogue  in  Exod.  xxxiv. 
17-26  (now  expanded  into  twelve  commandments) 
quite  different  from  that  in  Exod.  xx.  Yet  apart  from  the 
prohibition  of  images  in  general,  not  merely  of  molten 
images,  the  latter  is  not  less  primitive  than  the  former. 
In  Exod.  xxxiv.  27,  28,  we  read,  "  And  Yahweh  said  unto 
Moses,  Write  thou  these  words,  for  after  the  tenor  of 
these  words  I  have  made  a  covenant  with  thee  and  with 
Israel.  And  he  was  there  with  Yahweh  forty  days  and 
forty  nights ;  he  did  neither  eat  bread,  nor  drink  water. 
And  he  wrote  upon  the  tables  the  words  of  the  covenant, 
the  ten  words."  The  natural  sense  of  this  passage 
is  that   Moses   wrote  on   the  tables  of  stone  ten  com- 


THE    RISE    OF    THE    RELIGION     23 

mandments  which  had  just  been  given  him.  When  we 
examine  what  immediately  precedes  we  can  without 
difficulty  disengage  twelve  commandments ;  accordingly 
if  a  Decalogue  originally  stood  here  it  has  been  ex- 
panded by  the  insertion  of  two  additional  command- 
ments. The  original  collection  has  been  plausibly 
restored  as  follows  : — 

1.  Thou  shalt  worship  no  other  God. 

2.  Thou  shalt  make  thee  no  molten  gods. 

3.  The  feast  of  unleavened  bread  shalt  thou  keep. 

4.  Six  days  thou  shalt  work,  but  on  the  seventh  day 

thou  shalt  rest. 

5.  Thou  shalt  observe  the  feast  of  weeks  ; 

6.  And  the  feast  of  ingathering  at  the  year's  end. 

7.  Thou  shalt  not  offer  the  blood  of  any  sacrifice  with 

unleavened  bread. 

8.  The  sacrifice  of  the  Passover  shall  not  be  left  until 

the  morning. 

9.  The  first  of  the  firstfruits  of  thy  ground  shalt  thou 

bring  unto  the  house  of  Yahweh  thy  God. 
lo.  Thou  shalt  not  seethe  a  kid  in  its  mother's  milk. 

This  Decalogue  is  assigned  by  scholars  to  J  ;  the  Deca- 
logue in  Exod.  xx.  is  assigned  to  E.  The  majority  of 
critics  regard  J  as  the  older  document,  and  on  that 
ground,  as  well  as  on  account  of  its  less  advanced  theo- 


24     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

logical  and  ethical  character,  they  consider  J's  Decalogue 
to  be  the  earlier.  But  even  in  it  we  have  regulations 
which  are  suited  only  to  a  settled  people  practising 
agriculture.  The  prohibition  of  molten  images  is  not 
necessarily  to  be  taken  as  the  prohibition  of  images  alto- 
gether, so  that  there  is  less  difficulty  in  recognising  the 
Mosaic  origin  of  this  commandment  than  that  of  the 
more  general  prohibition  of  images  in  E's  Decalogue. 
The  possibility,  however,  may  be  left  open  that  originally 
J  possessed  the  same  version  of  the  Decalogue  as  E,  and 
that  the  editor,  when  he  combined  the  two  documents, 
struck  this  out  as  unnecessary  repetition,  inserting  the 
ritual  precepts  of  Exod.  xxxiv.  17-26  in  its  place. 

Apart  from  the  prohibition  of  images,  there  is  less  in 
E's  Decalogue  in  its  brief  primitive  form  to  conflict  with 
Mosaic  origin  than  in  the  Decalogue  assigned  to  J.  It 
does  not  necessarily  involve  so  advanced  an  ethical 
standpoint  as  to  force  us  to  derive  it  from  the  teaching 
of  the  prophets.  We  are  apt  under  the  conditions 
through  which  we  approach  its  precepts  to  read  more 
into  it  than  it  conveyed  to  those  who  first  received  it. 
Its  commandments  and  prohibitions  were  all  directed 
against  trespass  on  the  rights  of  God  or  one's  neighbour. 
But  we  may  recognise  the  Providence  of  God  in  that 
the  Decalogue,  while  designed  to  guide  men  at  a  com- 
paratively low  level,  yet  was   so  formulated  that  later 


THE    RISE    OF    THE    RELIGION     25 

generations  found  it  an  adequate  compendium  of  their 
religious  and  moral  duties.  Yet  is  it  more  needful  for 
us  to  be  reminded  that  we  must  not  overrate  its  value. 
The  place  it  has  held  in  the  presentation  of  Christianity 
by  the  Church  cannot  be  reconciled  with  the  New  Testa- 
ment attitude  to  the  Law.  And  even  within  the  Old 
Testament  itself  it  is  surpassed  by  much  in  the  later 
writers. 

None  of  the  Codes  of  Law  in  the  Pentateuch  can  be 
attributed  to  Moses.  This  is  clear  from  the  fact  that 
even  the  earliest  presupposes  a  people  settled  in  Palestine 
and  engaged  in  agriculture.  But  we  need  not  doubt  that 
some  of  the  laws  embodied  in  these  Codes  date  from  his 
time.  Moses  is  associated  in  Hebrew  tradition  with  the 
giving  of  the  Law,  and  the  position  he  held  as  judge  in- 
volved the  formulating  of  elementary  principles  of  justice 
between  man  and  man,  such  as  we  find  in  the  oldest 
legislation.  The  acceptance  of  Yahweh  as  the  national 
God  would  also  necessitate  some  simple  regulation  as  to 
the  proper  modes  to  be  adopted  in  worshipping  Him. 
In  both  of  these  respects  Moses  drew  on  the  traditional 
customs  of  the  Semitic  peoples.  We  find  many  elements 
in  Hebrew  ritual  derived  from  the  common  Semitic  body 
of  ceremonial,  and  many  of  the  regulations  prescribed 
even  in  the  latest  document  must  be  very  old.  And 
similarly  with  civil  law.     Recently  there  has  been  dis- 


26      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

covered  the  Code  of  Hammurabi,  King  of  Babylon 
(date  ?B.c.  1900).  This  exhibits  striking  similarities 
with  the  Book  of  the  Covenant,  through  it  contemplates 
a  much  more  advanced  and  complex  civilisation.  The 
relations  between  the  two  are  not  clear,  and  hasty  and 
far-reaching  theories  on  this  subject  are  to  be  deprecated. 
One  thing  is  clear,  that  Babylonian  and  Hebrew  Codes 
alike  incorporate  elements  of  immemorial  antiquity. 


CHAPTER    II 

THE   SETTLEMENT    IN    CANAAN   AND 
TRANSFORMATION   OF  THE    RELIGION 

That  the  Hebrews  did  not  first  become  worshippers 
of  Yahweh  after  they  entered  Palestine  is  proved  not 
simply  by  the  fact  that  they  made  good  their  foothold 
in  the  land  under  the  inspiring  conviction  that  they 
fought  under  His  banner,  but  especially  by  the  fact 
that  the  religion  of  Yahweh  was  a  wilderness  religion, 
and  that  the  settlement  in  Canaan  constituted  an  ordeal 
for  it  of  the  most  critical  kind.  It  had  the  most  im- 
portant consequences  for  nation  and  religion  alike.  It 
is  the  imperishable  glory  of  Moses  that  he  created  the 
nation  and  based  its  national  on  its  religious  conscious- 
ness. The  unity  of  Israel  was  guaranteed  by  the  con- 
viction that  it  had  been  called  by  Yahweh  to  be  a 
people  peculiarly  His  own.  The  national  unity  and 
the  religious  consciousness  were  alike  affected  by  the 
settlement  in  Canaan.  Were  the  common  impression 
correct,  that  the  Hebrews  poured  into  Canaan  as  a 
mighty  undivided  host  and  swept  the  inhabitants  away 


28      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

by  their  irresistible  force,  the  history  of  nation  and 
religion  alike  would  have  been  very  different  from  what 
they  actually  were.  But  the  impression  derived  from 
the  Book  of  Joshua  must  be  rectified  by  the  old  and 
valuable  narrative  preserved  in  the  first  chapter  of 
Judges  and  related  passages  in  the  Book  of  Joshua 
itself,  and  by  numerous  other  passages  in  the  early 
historical  sources.  Whatever  may  have  been  done  by 
united  effort  in  defeating  the  Canaanites,  it  is  clear  that 
most  was  left  to  the  action  of  individual  tribes.  And 
they  were  by  no  means  always  successful.  For  a  long 
time  they  could  gain  little  firm  foothold  in  the  plains ; 
it  was  in  the  mountainous  districts  that  they  were  best 
able  to  establish  themselves.  And  here  they  fell  appa- 
rently into  three  isolated  groups.  In  the  south  there 
was  Judah  with  the  remnant  of  Simeon,  in  the  centre 
the  Rachel  tribes,  and  in  the  north  Issachar,  Zebulun, 
Naphtali,  and  Asher.  At  an  early  period  Dan,  unable 
to  maintain  its  position  in  the  south,  came  for  the  most 
part  north  and  captured  Laish.  Reuben  and  Gad 
remained  on  the  east  of  the  Jordan.  In  this  way  the 
settlement  in  Canaan  profoundly  affected  the  political 
life  of  Israel.  The  national  unity,  which  Moses  had 
created,  gave  way  under  the  stress  of  the  new  con- 
ditions. The  song  of  Deborah,  which  is  one  of  the 
oldest,  perhaps  the  oldest  poem  in  the  Old  Testament, 


SETTLEMENT    IN    CANAAN        29 

and  of  the  utmost  historical  value,  though  obscure  in 
details  and  corrupt  in  text,  celebrates  the  sole  instance 
known  to  us  of  united  action  on  the  part  of  several 
tribes.  Yet  various  tribes  are  reproached  for  holding 
aloof,  although  they  are  reckoned  as  belonging  to  Israel. 
But  Judah  is  not  even  mentioned,  as  if  it  were  not  part 
of  Israel.  It  is  quite  clear  from  these  facts  that  the 
nation  was  in  danger  of  complete  disintegration.  And 
since  nation  and  religion  were  inseparably  united  the 
break-up  of  the  nation  would  have  meant  the  probable 
disappearance  of  the  religion.  Strictly  speaking,  there- 
was  no  Hebrew  nation  during  this  period,  but  only  a 
loose  agglomeration  of  tribes.  Nevertheless  these  tribes 
had  the  memories  of  Egyptian  oppression  and  their 
wonderful  deliverance  by  Yahweh  to  keep  alive  their 
devotion  to  Him,  and  through  it  their  sense  of  brother- 
hood. The  song  of  Deborah  itself  reveals  with  what 
intensity  the  flame  lit  by  Moses  glowed  in  the  poet's 
heart,  and  its  passionate  expression  of  patriotism  and 
religion  shows  that  both  still  survived  in  Israel,  in  spite 
of  all  the  forces  which  conspired  to  suppress  them. 
The  sense  of  unity,  however,  never  came  to  adequate 
expression,  and  normally  it  fell  far  short  of  what  was 
realised  for  one  splendid  triumph  over  Sisera  and  his 
host. 

While   the    religion   was    thus    threatened    from   the 


30      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

political  side,  it  was  exposed  directly  to  a  much  more 
serious  danger.  Far  from  extirpating  the  Canaanites, 
the  Hebrews  had  to  settle  down  with  them,  and  they 
did  not  always  have  the  upper  hand.  Through  alliance 
and  intermarriage  the  two  peoples  began  to  amalgamate. 
Quite  apart  from  this,  the  Hebrews  had  taken  one  of 
the  most  momentous  steps  in  their  history.  From  being 
a  pastoral  they  became  largely  an  agricultural  people. 
It  was  from  the  Canaanites  that  they  had  to  learn  how 
to  till  the  soil  and  secure  bountiful  harvests.  The 
cultivation  of  the  olive  and  the  vine,  in  particular, 
demands  advanced  knowledge  and  a  settled  civilisation. 
Lore  of  this  kind  implied  to  the  ancients  much  more 
than  it  would  to  us.  Fertility  was  regarded  as  the  gift 
of  the  local  Baalim,  or  divine  powers  which  haunted 
each  fruitfjil  district,  and  they  had  from  time  immemorial 
been  worshipped  with  rites  designed  to  win  from  them 
their  blessing  on  the  crops.  It  was  natural,  then,  that 
when  they  learnt  the  art  of  agriculture  the  Hebrews 
should  learn  and  practise  the  religious  rites  on  which 
its  success  depended.  This  worship  might  be  directed 
to  the  Baalim,  or  it  might  be  offered  to  Yahweh 
Himself.  In  the  first  instance  it  is  probable  that  the 
Baalim  were  its  recipients.  So  the  Book  of  Judges  tells 
us.  It  is  true  that  the  cycle  of  apostasy,  oppression, 
repentance,  and  deliverance  found  by  the  editor  in  the 


SETTLEMENT    IN    CANAAN        31 

history  really  presents  us  with  a  selection  of  facts  fitted 
into  a  systematic  plan  rather  than  with  a  complete 
history.  His  aim  was  to  edify  his  reader,  and  he  chose 
those  incidents  which  served  to  point  his  moral.  But 
when  this  is  fully  allowed  for,  we  may  recognise  that 
worship  of  the  Baalim  was  present  in  Israel.  This  is 
confirmed  by  Hosea,  who  speaks  of  the  people  as 
attributing  to  them  the  gift  of  the  corn  and  wine  and 
oil.  And  in  the  period  when  Yahweh  was  regarded 
as  a  wilderness  deity,  living  on  Sinai,  it  was  not  probable 
that  the  gift  of  the  fruits  of  the  earth  would  be  ascribed 
to  Him,  especially  while  Palestine  remained  largely  in 
possession  of  the  Canaanites.  Their  tenure  of  the 
more  fertile  districts  favoured  the  worship  of  the  Baalim. 
It  was  full  of  danger.  The  cult  of  the  powers  of 
fertility  shows  a  constant  tendency  to  slide  into  re- 
pulsive immorality.  It  is  notorious  that  with  the 
Canaanites  it  did  so.  It  can  hardly  have  failed  to  be 
disastrous  to  Israel  in  the  same  way,  but  the  ethical 
character  of  its  own  religion  must  have  protected  it 
from  the  worst  excesses.  In  course  of  time,  however, 
Yahweh  came  to  be  regarded  as  the  lord  of  Palestine. 
It  thus  became  easy  for  the  rites  connected  with  agricul- 
ture to  be  directed  to  Him,  and  all  the  more  so  since 
He  was  Himself  spoken  of  as  a  Baal  or  lord,  a  usage 
in  itself  quite  innocent,  but  leading  to  the  assimilation 


32      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

of  Him  to  the  Canaanite  Baalim.  When,  however, 
Yahweh  was  worshipped  as  the  giver  of  fertility  the 
peril  was  very  great  that  His  worship  should  be  con- 
taminated by  the  impurity  of  the  rites,  and  the  whole 
conception  of  His  character  degraded.  It  is,  therefore, 
not  surprising  that  some  rejected  the  whole  agricultural 
life  as  incompatible  with  loyalty  to  Yahweh,  and  the 
pure  practice  of  His  religion.  The  Nazirites  have 
been  thought  by  some  scholars  to  represent  this  type 
of  strict  Yahweh  worshippers.  It  is,  however,  far  from 
clear  that  this  can  be  made  out.  ^Ve  cannot  identify 
the  later  Naziritism  of  the  Priestly  Code,  which  con- 
templated simply  a  temporary  vow,  with  the  lifelong* 
Naziritism  exemplified  in  the  cases  of  Samson  and 
Samuel.  The  temporary  Nazirite  was  defiled  by  touch 
of  a  dead  body,  but  Samson  was  constantly  brought 
into  contact  with  them,  while  Samuel  hewed  Agag  in 
pieces  before  Yahweh.  Each,  it  is  true,  kept  the  hair 
uncut  while  he  remained  a  Nazirite.  But  the  temporary 
Nazirite  did  not  cut  it,  because  it  was  dedicated  to 
Yahweh  and  was  to  be  offered  to  Him  as  a  sacrifice 
at  the  termination  of  the  vow.  The  lifelong  Nazirite 
in  the  nature  of  the  case  could  never  make  this  sacrifice 
to  Yahweh,  and  the  preservation  of  the  hair  seems  not 
to  have  been  due  to  the  dedication  of  it  to  Yahweh, 
but  to  the  feelins:  that  the  loss  of  it  robbed  a  man  of 


SETTLEMENT    IN    CANAAN        33 

an  integral  part  of  his  personality.  This  is  especially 
clear  in  the  case  of  Samson.  His  strength  resides  in 
the  hair;  it  may  not  be  cut  on  pain  of  his  becoming 
weak.  The  treatment  of  the  hair  rests,  then,  on  different 
principles  in  the  two  cases,  and  both  for  the  dedication 
to  the  Deity  culminating  in  a  sacrifice  of  the  hair,  and 
for  the  preservation  of  it  as  a  part  of  the  person  which 
cannot  be  taken  away  without  serious  loss,  we  have 
analogies  among  many  peoples.  It  is  probable  that 
the  similarity  in  the  treatment  of  the  hair  led  to  the 
transference  of  the  name  from  the  early  permanent  to 
the  post-exilic  temporary  vow.  This  distinction  between 
the  two  types  is  important  for  its  bearing  on  the  question 
whether  the  early  Nazirites  repudiated  the  agricultural 
life.  This  view  is  supported  by  the  prohibition  of  wine, 
wine  being  pre-eminently  the  gift  of  the  Baalim.  But 
the  taboo  on  the  vine  with  all  its  products  is  imposed 
on  the  temporary  Nazirites.  We  are  far  from  certain 
that  it  was  so  with  the  permanent  Nazirites.  It  is  true 
that  Amos  ii.  12,  "Ye  gave  the  Nazirites  wine  to  drink," 
naturally  suggests  that  wine  was  forbidden  to  them, 
though  the  next  clause,  "and  commanded  the  prophets, 
saying,  Prophesy  not,"  compared  with  Isaiah  xxviii.  7, 
might  favour  the  interpretation,  You  gave  the  Nazirites 
wine  to  make  them  incapable  of  fulfilling  their  sacred 
functions.      It   seems,   however,    probable    that    in    the 


34      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

time  of  Amos  wine  was  forbidden  to  the  Nazirites. 
The  prohibition  of  strong  drink  and  unclean  food,  and 
any  food  that  came  from  the  vine,  to  Samson's  mother 
seems  to  carry  it  back  to  his  time,  though  the  command 
to  the  mother  is  not  necessarily  binding  on  the  son. 
But  in  any  case  it  is  difficult  to  think  of  Samson  as 
himself  abstaining  from  wine  at  the  drinking  feast  he 
gave  on  the  occasion  of  his  wedding.  We  cannot,  then, 
safely  regard  the  Nazirites  as  representatives  of  the 
belief  that  the  agricultural  life  involved  disloyalty  to 
Yahweh,  and  as  expressing  their  protest  in  a  refusal  to 
drink  wine.  It  is  probable,  however,  that  this  position 
was  actually  taken  by  the  Rechabites.  In  Jer.  xxxv. 
the  Rechabites  refuse  to  drink  wine  because  their 
ancestor,  Jonadab  the  son  of  Rechab,  had  bidden  them 
drink  no  wine,  build  no  houses,  sow  no  seed,  plant 
no  vineyards  nor  possess  them,  but  dwell  in  tents.  It 
is  clear  from  this  that  they  renounced  agriculture  and 
a  settled  life  altogether,  and  lived  as  nomads.  Jonadab 
is  known  to  us  as  a  hearty  sympathiser  with  the 
atrocities  committed  by  Jehu  under  cover  of  zeal  for 
Yahweh.  We  may,  therefore,  see  in  him  a  fanatical 
devotee  of  Yahweh,  who  rejected  the  agricultural  life  as 
involving  unfaithfulness  to  Him.  It  is  clear  that  while 
this  attitude  was  in  a  measure  justified  by  the  popular 
religion,  it  meant  the  purchase  of  religious  purity  with 


SETTLEMENT    IN    CANAAN 


35 


a  very  heavy  price.  For  it  implied  nothing  short  of  a 
renunciation  of  civilisation  with  all  its  blessings.  The 
people  generally  took  over  the  culture  and  civilisation 
of  the  Canaanites,  without  intentional  unfaithfulness  to 
Yahweh,  even  when  they  worshipped  the  local  Baalim 
side  by  side  with  their  national  God.  Hosea  condemned 
the  whole  view  that  the  Baalim  were  the  givers  of  the 
corn  and  wine  and  oil,  and  ascribed  all  these  blessings 
to  Yahweh.  In  this  way  he  threw  the  sanctions  of  the 
pure  and  lofty  prophetic  religion  over  civilisation,  and 
thus  performed  a  service  of  inestimable  value.  Yet  he 
was  so  conscious  of  the  perils  which  the  agricultural  life 
brought  to  religion,  that  he  looked  for  Israel's  reform  to 
come  through  return  to  the  desert,  and  only  after  she 
has  in  this  way  returned  to  Yahweh  does  He  restore  to 
her  the  corn  and  wine  and  oil. 

Three  agricultural  feasts  are  prescribed  in  the  earliest 
legislation.  It  is  highly  probable  that  these  were 
adopted  from  the  Canaanites  into  the  religion  of  Yahweh. 
The  first  was  the  feast  of  unleavened  bread,  when  the 
corn  was  first  cut  in  the  spring  and  the  first-fruits  were 
offered.  Seven  weeks  later,  at  the  end  of  harvest,  the 
second  feast  was  celebrated,  the  harvest  festival,  or  feast 
of  weeks.  In  the  autumn  there  was  the  feast  of  taber- 
nacles, or  the  feast  of  ingathering  at  the  year's  end. 
While  in  the  earliest  legislation  all  three  stand  on  the 


36      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

same  level,  the  historical  books  mention  the  last  only, 
and  speak  of  it  as  "  the  feast "  or  "  the  feast  of  Yahweh," 
and  probably  it  was  the  most  important  of  the  three. 

There  was  no  sanctuary  with  an  exclusive  legitimacy 
in  the  sense  that  all  other  sanctuaries  were  an  infringe- 
ment of  its  monopoly.  No  doubt  the  home  of  the  ark 
enjoyed  great  prestige,  but  the  places  of  worship  were 
innumerable.  The  sanctuaries  at  the  Bamoth  or  high 
places  would  usually  be  rude  and  primitive  structures, 
but  there  were  others,  such  as  those  at  Bethel  or 
Beersheba,  of  more  than  local  repute,  which  attracted 
worshippers  from  other  places  in  large  numbers.  The 
sanctity  of  the  high  places  dated  in  many  instances  from 
Canaanite  times ;  the  earlier  documents  of  Genesis 
connect  it  frequently  with  revelations  of  God  to  the 
patriarchs. 

There  were,  no  doubt,  priests  at  the  larger  shrines. 
While  it  may  be  taken  for  granted  that  nothing  was 
known  till  long  after  of  any  exclusion  from  the  priestly 
office  of  all  members  of  the  tribe  of  Levi  save  the 
descendants  of  Aaron,  it  is  not  clear  what  was  the 
precise  relation  of  the  Levites  to  the  priesthood. 
Apparently  Simeon  and  Levi  were  nearly  exterminated 
in  consequence  of  a  treacherous  attack  on  Shechem 
(Gen.  xxxiv.,  xlix.  5-7).  Owing,  perhaps,  to  the  fact 
that  Moses  had  been  a  Levite,  the  scattered,  wandering 


SETTLEMENT    IN    CANAAN        37 

members  of  the  tribe  naturally  turned  to  the  priesthood 
for  a  living.  In  the  family  and  clan  of  Moses  the 
priestly  tradition  as  to  the  service  of  Yahweh  would  be 
preserved,  and  a  Levite  would  be  preferred  by  those  in 
search  of  a  priest.  The  narrative  in  Judges  xvii.,  xviii.  is 
most  instructive  on  this  point.  Micah,  an  Ephraimite, 
made  his  son  priest  of  a  private  sanctuary  he  had  estab- 
lished, and  therefore  the  priesthood  was  not  confined  to 
the  Levites.  Later,  however,  a  Levite  wandering  from 
Bethlehem  to  find  a  situation  is  engaged  by  Micah  as 
his  priest,  and  Micah  is  sure  that  Yahweh  will  do  him 
good  because  he  has  a  Levite  for  a  priest.  From  this  it 
is  clear  that  while  a  non-Levite  might  become  a  priest, 
a  Levite  was  greatly  preferred.  This  Levite  was  the 
grandson  of  Moses,  and  having  stolen  Micah's  images 
he  accompanied  the  Danites  to  Laish,  and  there  founded 
the  sanctuary  and  priesthood  of  Dan.  It  is  likely  that 
other  members  of  the  tribe  similarly  became  priests,  and 
even  such  priests  as  were  not  of  the  tribe  of  Levi  would 
probably  in  course  of  time  style  themselves  Levites. 

The  duties  of  the  priests  were  varied  and  important. 
They  had  the  care  of  the  ritual  observances  and  sacrifices, 
since  they  knew  the  correct  way  in  which  Yahweh 
should  be  worshipped.  They  were  also  constantly 
consulted  by  those  who  wished  to  know  the  Divine  will, 
or  to  ascertain  if  an  enterprise  would  have  a  successful 


38      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

issue.  In  giving  oracles  of  this  kind  they  often  used 
mechanical  means,  such  as  the  lot.  One  of  their  most 
important  functions  was  that  of  pronouncing  judgment. 
Although  Budde  is  correct  in  regarding  this  as  part 
of  the  previously  named  duty  of  giving  oracles,  yet  it 
was  not  the  mere  declaration  of  the  criminal's  identity 
that  constituted  the  whole  of  their  work.  Malachi 
sketches  a  lofty  ideal  of  the  priests'  duty  (ii.  1-9),  and 
though  he  is  a  post-exilic  writer  the  fact  that  Hosea 
confirms  this  (iv.  i-io),  in  his  denunciation  of  their 
unfaithfulness  to  the  ideal,  warrants  us  in  regarding  it  as 
recognised  by  priest  and  people  alike.  It  was  their 
function  to  declare  that  knowledge  for  lack  of  which  the 
people  were  perishing.  This  knowledge,  as  we  see  from 
Hosea,  was  ethical  in  character.  And  this  function 
deepened  the  ethical  character  of  the  religion  and 
emphasised  the  morality  of  Israel's  God.  In  so  doing 
it  quickened  the  movement  towards  universalism.  Other 
religions  were  tribal  or  national,  their  rites  known 
exclusively  to  the  initiated,  the  men  of  the  tribe.  They 
bound  men  into  a  close  corporation,  made  them  sectarian 
and  exclusive,  and  thus  worked  against  universalism. 
But  moral  principles  work  in  the  opposite  direction. 
They  are  not  the  property  of  a  nation  or  a  clan,  but 
express  the  common  duties  of  man  to  man,  and  are 
universal  in  their  obligation.     A  religion  which  incor- 


SETTLEMENT    IN    CANAAN        39 

porates  them  into  itself  and  gives  them  its  sanction 
is,  even  in  spite  of  itself,  leavened  inevitably  though 
perhaps  slowly  with  universalism.  If  there  are  different 
gods  of  varying  character,  it  is  natural  to  infer  that 
there  are  different  standards  of  right  and  wrong.  But 
when  it  was  recognised  that  the  distinction  of  right  and 
wrong  was  an  absolute  distinction,  independent  of  time 
or  place  or  people,  a  new  conception  would  arise.  If 
right  conduct  was  of  universal  validity  and  obligation, 
and  if  moral  law  was  the  expression  of  the  Divine 
will,  then  monotheism  followed.  For  in  that  case  one 
standard  of  morality  implied  one  God. 

Early  Hebrew  sacrifice  was  essentially  a  clan-feast,  in 
which  the  worshippers  had  festive  communion  with  each 
other  and  their  God.  Only  such  animals  as  were  used 
for  food  were  sacrificed.  The  idea  of  a  meal  dominates 
the  ritual.  The  part  of  the  victim  given  to  God  is 
cooked,  just  as  that  eaten  by  the  worshippers.  The 
usual  accompaniments  of  a  meal  are  added — bread,  wine, 
oil,  and  salt.  It  was  a  popular  notion  that  wine  cheered 
gods  as  well  as  men.  Drunkenness  was  not  unknown, 
and  even  so  late  as  Deuteronomy  the  standing  expres- 
sion for  a  sacrifice  is  "  to  eat  and  drink  before  Yahweh." 
The  offerings  were  in  the  later  ritual  spoken  of  as  the 
bread  of  God.  In  the  table  of  shewbread  we  have  a 
survival  of  the  custom  of  spreading  a  table  for  the  Deity. 


40      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

First-fruits  and  other  vegetable  offerings  were  of  the 
nature  of  tribute  to  God  for  the  use  of  the  fertile  soil. 
Human  sacrifice  was  apparently  not  unknown.  We 
should  probably  interpret  the  story  of  Jephthah's  daughter 
in  this  sense,  and  the  story  of  the  sacrifice  of  Isaac  seems 
to  attest  the  feeling  that  such  a  sacrifice  was  not  regarded 
as  out  of  the  question.  It  was  probably,  however,  quite 
rare  in  the  early  period.  It  became  more  frequent  at  a 
later  time,  in  the  gloomier  state  of  feeling  caused  by  the 
break-up  of  the  smaller  states  in  conflict  with  Assyria 
and  Babylonia. 


CHAPTER  III 

FROM    SAMUEL   TO    ELISHA 

The  disintegration  of  the  nation,  which  has  already 
been  described,  made  it  impossible  for  the  Hebrews 
successfully  to  resist  the  Philistines.  It  was  their  abject 
failure  here  that  stung  them  at  last  into  action.  And 
as  we  should  expect,  we  find  religion  and  patriotism 
going  hand  in  hand.  For  it  is  at  this  juncture  that 
the  prophets  emerge  into  the  clear  light  of  history,  and 
the  monarchy  is  established,  while  Saul  forms  a  signifi- 
cant link  between  the  two  elements.  These  prophets, 
who  resembled  the  dancing  dervishes  of  a  later  day, 
were  probably  zealous  devotees  of  Yahweh,  and  incited 
the  people  to  serve  Him  more  faithfully.  They  may,  as 
Budde  thinks,  have  reflected  on  the  double  fact  that 
Israel  was  under  the  Philistine  yoke,  and  that  the  for- 
tunes of  the  ark  had  proved  that  Yahweh  was  mightier 
than  this  Philistines,  and  have  reached  the  conclusion 
that  their  evil  plight  was  due  not  to  the  weakness  but 
the  anger  of  their  God.  If  this  conclusion  were  true, 
then  the  remedy  lay  in  fuller  devotion  to  Him.     And 


42      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

this  naturally  had  its  political  aspect.  The  zeal  of  the 
prophets  for  Yahweh  was  expressed  in  this,  that  they 
kindled  in  the  breasts  of  their  countrymen  the  flame  of 
patriotism  and  revolt.  They  were  patriots  in  so  far  as  the 
feeling  had  taken  possession  of  them  that  Israel  ought 
to  be  free.  They  had  felt  the  bitterness  of  the  foreign 
yoke,  and  had  set  themselves  to  stimulate  resistance  and 
prepare  for  a  revolt.  And  this  patriotism  could  not  be 
other  than  religious,  for  it  is  especially  true  of  Israel 
that  the  religious  and  the  national  were  inseparably 
associated.  The  programme  of  the  early  prophets  pro- 
bably expressed  two  convictions,  that  Israel  should  be 
free,  and  that  more  zeal  should  be  shown  in  the  worship 
of  Yahweh.  Apparently  the  older  seers  attached  them- 
selves to  the  prophets.  They  would  bring  the  light  of 
cooler  reason,  and  would  catch  the  glow  of  enthusiasm 
and  the  patriotic  interest  in  the  fortunes  of  Israel,  rather 
than  in  the  more  personal  and  professional  subjects  that 
had  hitherto  engaged  their  attention. 

The  prophets  impressed  their  countrymen  by  their 
abnormal  physical  and  psychical  conditions.  Thus  they 
were  stimulated  by  music,  and  their  ecstasy  suggested  to 
many  that  they  were  mad.  Their  enthusiasm  was  con- 
tagious, as  we  see  from  the  story  of  Saul  and  the 
messengers  whom  he  sent  to  capture  David.  Whether 
prophecy  was  borrowed  from  the  Canaanites  we  cannot 


FROM    SAMUEL    TO    ELISHA      43 

say.  We  do  not  know  of  Cana:anite  prophets.  Those 
who  confronted  EHjah  on  Carmel  were  Phoenicians. 

The  character  of  prophecy  will  become  clear  as  we 
proceed.  We  shall  watch  its  transformation  as  it  emerged 
from  the  lower  type  which  meets  us  in  the  time  of  Saul 
till  it  reaches  the  wonderful  heights  attained  by  an  Amos 
or  a  Jeremiah.  Here  it  will  be  enough  to  mention  a 
few  salient  points.  The  prophets  were  preachers  who 
delivered  the  message  of  God  to  the  nation.  It  was 
their  aim  to  regenerate  social  conditions,  and  bring  them 
into  harmony  with  God's  will.  This  involved  an 
attitude  to  both  internal  and  foreign  politics.  They 
spoke  to  their  own  age,  and  so  far  as  they  dealt  with  the 
future  it  was  with  a  future  which  sprang  directly  out  of 
the  present.  With  what  lay  behind  their  own  age  they 
concerned  themselves  but  little.  They  were  sensitive  to 
events  which  were  soon  to  happen,  because  they  had 
hearkened  in  the  council  of  God.  They  were  poets, 
and  must  be  read  as  such.  We  may  be  betrayed  into 
many  misunderstandings  if  we  insist  on  a  too  prosaic 
literahsm. 

The  establishment  of  the  monarchy  was  a  great 
advance.  It  gave  to  the  disorganised  and  isolated  tribes 
a  rallying-point  and  centre  of  unity.  Saul,  who  at  the 
beginning  of  his  career  became  a  prophet,  was  a  zealous 
devotee  of  Yahweh,  as  several  incidents  show,  and  he 


44      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

was  also  the  patriot  who  snapped  the  PhiUstine  yoke. 
His  prestige  was  much  increased  by  his  successful 
campaigns,  in  which  he  was  greatly  indebted  to  David's 
military  genius.  His  jealousy  of  David,  magnified  no 
doubt  by  the  insanity  to  which  in  his  later  years  he  fell 
a  victim,  cost  him  his  ablest  general,  and  he  died, 
disastrously  defeated  by  the  Philistines.  A  division 
of  the  kingdom  now  took  place.  Judah,  which  had  been 
loosely  attached  to  Israel,  made  David  king,  while 
Ishbaal  held  his  father's  position  east  of  Jordan.  Both 
kingdoms  were  probably  under  Philistine  suzerainty. 
David  at  last  secured  undivided  sovereignty,  regained  the 
independence  of  Israel,  and  began  a  series  of  successful 
campaigns,  which  won  for  him  a  large  and  powerful 
kingdom.  It  was  an  epoch-making  event  when  he 
captured  Jerusalem,  made  it  his  capital,  and  installed 
the  ark  there,  as  we  can  see  when  we  remember  what 
Jerusalem  has  been  in  the  religious  history  of  the  world. 
Although  David  kept  teraphim  in  his  house,  and  his 
religious  ideas  were  so  crude  that  he  regarded  expulsion 
from  the  inheritance  of  Yahweh  as  tantamount  to  a  com- 
mand to  go  and  serve  other  gods  (I.  Sam.  xxvi.  19),  he  was 
unquestionably  an  ardent  worshipper  of  Yahweh,  whose 
prestige  had  been  so  increased  by  his  victories.  Solomon 
had  no  inclination  to  war,  and  his  foreign  policy  is  open 
to    effective    criticism.      The   tendency   to    disruption, 


FROM    SAMUEL    TO    ELISHA       45 

which  had  been  present  in  David's  reign,  grew  stronger 
under  Solomon,  and  was  held  in  check  only  while  he 
lived.  He  governed  Israel  in  the  interests  of  Judah  and 
Jerusalem.  He  exacted  forced  labour  from  the  other 
tribes  to  make  his  capital  splendid,  to  build  his  palace 
and  his  temple.  Revolt  thus  became  inevitable,  if  no 
change  toward  an  equitable  policy  were  introduced  and 
the  undue  favouritism  to  Judah  did  not  cease.  As 
Rehoboam  declared  his  intention  of  increasing  the 
burdens  of  the  other  tribes,  the  northern  kingdom  was 
established.  It  soon  gained  preponderating  power,  and 
became  much  the  stronger  and  more  splendid  of  the 
two.  Jeroboam  imitated  the  example  of  Solomon,  by 
trying  to  rival  the  splendour  of  the  royal  temple  at 
Jerusalem.  Though  Yahweh  was  worshipped  under  the 
form  of  a  bull,  there  was  in  this  no  conscious  apostasy. 
We  know  very  little  about  the  history  of  the  prophets 
during  the  period  from  David  to  Ahab.  We  may 
suppose  that  the  companies  of  prophets  continued  to 
exist,  and  the  fact  that  Amos  is  master  of  a  technical 
religious  vocabulary  suggests  that  in  the  meantime  the 
work  of  the  prophets  had  continued,  so  that  when  Amos 
appeared  he  found  the  prophetic  speech  ready  formed  for 
his  use. 

They    emerge    into    prominence    again    during    the 
dynasty  of  Omri.      The  political  situation  changed  with 


46      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

his  accession  in  a  way  that  disastrously  affected  the 
religion.  He  strengthened  the  northern  kingdom  by  an 
alliance  with  Tyre,  while  his  son  Ahab  married  Jezebel, 
the  daughter  of  the  Tyrian  king.  In  this  way  the 
worship  of  Melkart,  the  Baal  of  Tyre,  was  introduced 
into  Israel,  for  political  alliance  often  carried  with  it  in 
antiquity  the  mutual  adoption  by  each  party  of  the 
worships  of  the  other.  But  this  was  in  radical  antagonism 
to  the  fundamental  character  of  the  genuine  religion  of 
Israel.  It  was  not  a  question  here  of  the  worship  of 
family  deities,  which  might  easily  exist  alongside  of  the 
worship  of  Yahweh  without  any  sense  that  it  trenched 
on  His  exclusive  domain ;  but  it  was  the  question  of 
admitting  a  foreign  deity  to  stand  by  the  side  of  Israel's 
God.  And  although  it  was  not  the  intention  that 
Melkart  should  be  a  rival  to  Yahweh,  but  rather  that 
the  two  deities  should  stand  in  friendship  side  by  side, 
it  was  felt  by  many  that  this  was  an  intolerable  innova- 
tion. In  his  despondency,  when  he  thought  himself  to 
be  the  only  true  worshipper  of  Yahweh,  Elijah  was  told 
that  seven  thousand  had  not  bowed  the  knee  to  the  Baal. 
But  it  was  in  Elijah  that  their  dumb  protest  found 
articulate  expression.  He  clearly  recognised  that  the 
true  formula  was  not  Yahweh  and  Melkart,  but  Yahweh 
or  Melkart ;  his  ruling  conviction  was  that  the  two  were 
mutually  exclusive  j  the  people    must   choose  between 


FROM    SAMUEL    TO    ELISHA       47 

them,  for  Yahweh  would  tolerate  no  companion  or  rival. 
But  while  Elijah  was  the  defender  of  the  sole  right  of 
Yahweh  to  be  the  God  of  Israel,  he  denounced  with 
equal  passion  the  judicial  murder  of  Naboth.  In  him 
we  see  religion  and  morality  inextricably  blended. 
Whether  he  had  formulated  a  belief  that  Yahweh  was 
the  only  God  we  do  not  know.  Nor  is  the  question  of 
importance.  For  what  the  crisis  demanded  was  not  a 
speculative  belief.  It  was  that,  whether  other  gods 
existed  or  no,  Israel  was  Yahweh's  people,  and  should 
serve  Him  alone.  But  this  service  was  not  completely 
rendered  in  acts  of  worship;  it  included  as  essential 
elements  the  fulfilment  of  the  common  duties  of  man  to 
man,  especially  justice  and  the  avoidance  of  oppression. 
But  Elijah  was  not  the  only  true  prophet  of  that  time, 
though  incomparably  the  greatest.  Just  before  the 
battle  in  which  Ahab  fell,  we  find  him  consulting  four 
hundred  prophets,  who,  one  ilnd  all,  prophesy  success. 
Jehoshaphat  is  struck  with  their  suspicious  unanimity, 
and  asks  if  there  is  no  other  prophet.  Ahab  admits 
that  there  is  Micaiah,  but  he  hates  him  because  he 
always  prophesies  evil.  The  messenger  who  fetches 
him  counsels  him  to  speak  as  the  others  have  spoken, 
but  he  replies  that  he  will  speak  what  Yahweh  says  to 
him.  When  he  comes  to  the  king  he  sarcastically  bids 
him  go,  for  he  will  prosper.     Then,  on  the  king's  adjura- 


48      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

tion  that  he  shall  speak  the  truth,  he  tells  him  that 
Yahweh  has  put  a  lying  spirit  in  the  mouth  of  the 
prophets,  to  lure  Ahab  to  his  ruin.  Here  we  have  the 
first  instance  of  a  phenomenon  that  in  later  times 
became  of  great  importance,  the  distinction  between  the 
false  prophets  and  the  true.  The  false  are  the  courtier 
prophets,  who  speak  smooth  things,  which  will  flatter 
the  prejudices  of  their  hearers,  or  secure  gain  for  them- 
selves. Over  against  them  stand  the  true  prophets,  of 
whom  Micaiah  is  the  type,  who  speak  the  word  of 
Yahweh  without  regard  to  its  pleasant  sound.  Un- 
fortunately it  seems  to  have  been  the  case  during  the 
pre-exilic  period  that  the  false  prophets  were  in  a  majority, 
often  in  an  overwhelming  majority.  Probably  it  was  the 
members  of  the  prophetic  guilds — the  official  prophets,  so 
to  speak — who  had  settled  down  to  repeat  such  things  as 
would  please  their  hearers.  They  stood  in  the  official 
prophetic  succession.  But  the  future  rested  with  those 
who  belonged  to  no  official  order,  and  could  claim  no 
human  sanction  for  their  message,  but,  conscious  of 
their  own  immediate  call  and  inspiration,  spoke  with 
undaunted  boldness  the  truths  which  God  Himself  had 
revealed  to  them  in  the  experience  of  their  hearts.  Yet 
we  must  not  be  unjust  to  those  whom  we  must  call  false 
prophets.  It  is  not  likely  that  they  were  to  any  great 
extent  conscious  impostors.     In  some  cases,  no  doubt, 


FROM    SAMUEL    TO    ELISHA      49 

they  were  blinded  by  self-interest,  in  others  by  a  mis- 
taken patriotism,  or  by  a  religious  conservatism  that  led 
them  to  cling  to  doctrines  or  rites,  which  the  higher 
religion  of  their  time  had  left  behind. 

The  labours  of  Elijah  achieved  but  little  during  his 
lifetime :  the  accomplishment  of  his  ideals  he  left  as  a 
legacy  to  his  successors.  At  the  bidding  of  Elisha,  Jehu 
overthrew  the  dynasty  of  Ahab,  and  extirpated  the 
worship  of  Melkart.  The  revolution  which  placed  him 
on  the  throne  meant,  from  a  religious  point  of  view,  the 
exclusion  of  a  foreign  cult  from  Israel.  Henceforth  it 
was  burned  into  the  consciousness  of  the  nation  that 
Yahweh  was  a  jealous  God,  who  would  brook  no  divided 
allegiance.  Whether  beyond  this  there  was  any  im- 
provement may  be  questioned.  The  new  dynasty  was 
for  a  long  time  less  powerful  than  that  which  it  had 
supplanted.  The  political  fortunes  of  Israel  grew  darker 
and  darker.  Jehu  and  his  earlier  successors  fared  much 
more  disastrously  than  Ahab  in  the  Syrian  wars,  and 
speedily  lost,  and  far  more  than  lost,  the  ground  which 
he  had  gained.  The  desperate  extremities  to  which 
Israel  was  reduced  may  have  chastened  its  conduct  and 
purified  its  belief.  When  it  seemed  as  if  all  hope  was 
lost,  deliverance  came  through  Assyria.  The  great 
empire  had  exhausted  the  strength  of  Syria.  Joash  and 
Jeroboam   11.  were  able  to  turn  the  tide  against  her. 

D 


50      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

They  regained  what  she  had  ^Yrested  from  Israel  and 
added  new  territory  to  the  northern  kingdom.  Assyria 
sank  into  a  condition  of  lethargy,  so  that  no  trouble  was 
felt  from  her  during  the  long  period  in  which  Israel  con- 
solidated her  conquests  and  reached  a  pitch  of  prosperity 
such  as  she  had  not  enjoyed  since  the  reign  of  Solomon. 
The  national  life  expanded,  and  wealth  enormously  in- 
creased. Externally  all  seemed  well.  Syria,  the  old 
rival  of  Israel,  was  at  last  humbled.  Assyria,  the 
dreaded  military  empire,  had  come  into  but  fleeting 
contact  with  Israel,  and  its  inactivity  quickly  caused  the 
terror  of  it  to  be  forgotten  by  a  people  which  had  risen 
so  rapidly  to  the  zenith  of  its  power.  Yet  a  clear-sighted 
observer  could  hardly  fail  to  recognise  that,  after  no  long 
interval,  Assyria  would  resume  her  march  of  conquest, 
and  Israel  would  have  to  fight  or  submit.  And  beneath 
the  surface  the  internal  condition  of  Israel  was  far  from 
satisfactory.  The  best  strength  of  the  nation  had  been 
drained  from  it  in  the  long  struggle  with  Syria.  The 
sturdy,  virtuous  peasants  who  lived  and  laboured  on  the 
small  homesteads  they  had  inherited  from  their  ancestors 
had  largely  disappeared.  Wealth  increased,  but  was 
accumulated  in  comparatively  few  hands.  The  poor 
grew  still  poorer;  what  little  they  possessed  was  often 
filched  from  them,  and  the  law-courts  gave  them  no 
redress  against  oppression  and  injustice.     The  wealth 


FROM    SAMUEL    TO    ELISH  A      51 

wrung  from  these  hapless  victims  was  lavished  in  riotous 
living,  so  that  the  economic  progress  of  the  country  was 
retarded  by  unproductive  expenditure,  while  luxury  sapped 
the  character  of  the  ruling  classes.  And  this  was  all  the 
more  hateful  that  ruthless  oppression  and  shameless  vice 
were  combined  with  fervent  and  punctilious  performance 
of  religious  ceremonies.  The  dark  picture  will  come 
before  us  in  fuller  detail  as  we  proceed  to  study  the 
early  canonical  prophets,  and  observe  how  it  excited  the 
scorching  indignation  of  Amos  and  the  heart-breaking 
sorrow  of  Hosea,  and  filled  them  with  the  foreboding 
of  swift  judgment  at  Yahweh's  hands. 


CHAPTER  IV 

AMOS  AND  HOSEA 

Two  of  our  canonical  prophets,  Amos  and  Hosea, 
worked  in  the  northern  kingdom,  though  Amos  was  a 
native  of  Judah.  The  earlier  prophets  had  for  the  most 
part  been  content  to  utter  the  spoken  word,  and  leave  it 
to  chance  whether  it  was  recorded  or  not.  But  from 
Amos  onwards  we  have  a  succession  of  writing  prophets, 
who  not  only  spoke  the  prophetic  word,  but  enshrined 
it  in  a  permanent  form.  We  do  not  know  what  led 
them  to  supplement  oral  by  written  prophecy,  whether  to 
show  the  truth  of  their  predictions  by  leaving  them  in  a 
form  which  enabled  them  to  be  tested  by  the  event,  or 
whether  the  opposition  they  excited  led  them  to  commit 
to  writing  what  they  were  forbidden  to  speak. 

Amos  was  a  native  of  Tekoa,  a  little  town  six  miles 
south  of  Bethlehem,  on  the  edge  of  the  wilderness.  He 
was  a  shepherd  and  a  dresser  of  sycomore  trees,  the 
fruit  of  which  was  coarse,  and  was  used  only  by  the 
poorest  people.  He  was  not  a  member  of  one  of  the 
prophetic  guilds.       He  had  come   from   Judah   under 


AMOSANDHOSEA  53 

direct  Divine  impulse  to  announce  the  impending  de- 
struction of  the  northern  kingdom.  His  utterances  at 
the  royal  sanctuary  of  Bethel  created  such  a  sensation 
that  Amaziah  the  priest  complained  to  Jeroboam  II. 
that  his  prophecies  were  treasonable,  and  bade  the 
prophet  himself  return  to  Judah.  The  date  of  Amos  is 
uncertain,  but  probably  it  was  about  760  B.C. 

He  came  to  a  society  morally  rotten  and  more  than 
ripe  for  judgment.  Material  prosperity  had  sapped  the 
integrity  of  the  nation.  Life  had  become  for  the  rich 
very  luxurious,  and  with  the  contempt  of  a  hardy 
countryman  for  the  self-indulgent  dwellers  in  palaces, 
Amos  tells  of  the  summer  and  winter  houses  sumptu- 
ously furnished  with  silk  and  ivory,  of  the  idle  songs 
sung  to  the  sound  of  the  harp,  of  the  musical  instruments 
invented  by  the  revellers.  He  describes  their  banquets, 
for  which  the  choicest  foods  were  prepared,  at  which, 
instead  of  sitting,  they  had  adopted  the  fashion  of 
reclining;  their  drunkenness,  so  abandoned  that  they 
drank  their  wine  out  of  bowls  rather  than  out  of  cups  ; 
the  costly  ointments  with  which  they  were  anointed. 
In  these  revels  the  proud  ladies  of  Samaria,  as  well  as 
their  husbands,  shared.  But  there  are  graver  sins  than 
these,  which  do  not  merely  excite  the  prophet's  scornful 
disgust,  but  kindle  his  flaming  indignation.  These  were 
the  terrible  social  wrongs  inflicted  on  the  poor  by  the 


54      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

rich.  Nathan's  parable  of  the  ewe  lamb  reflects  only 
too  truly  the  constant  relations  between  rich  and  poor  in 
the  East,  and  social  wrongs  are  continually  referred  to 
by  the  prophets.  Luxury  was  costly,  and  much  of  the 
cost  of  providing  it  was  wrung  from  the  poor.  Amos 
describes  how  the  rich  store  up  violence  and  robbery  in 
their  palaces,  oppress  the  poor  and  crush  the  needy,  sell 
the  righteous  for  silver  and  the  needy  for  a  pair  of  shoes. 
While  the  rich  rob  and  oppress  the  poor,  the  merchants 
cheat  them  with  false  weights  and  measures.  Another 
constant  feature  in  Oriental  society  meets  us  in  Amos, 
as  in  many  other  prophets.  It  was  very  difficult  for  the 
poor  to  secure  from  the  judges  redress  against  their 
oppressors.  Justice  w^as  perverted  by  bribery,  and  the 
needy  were  turned  aside  from  their  right. 

Their  flagrant  crimes  did  not  prevent  them  from  being 
very  religious.  They  were  punctilious  in  bringing  their 
tithes,  they  were  lavish  of  burnt  offerings,  meal  offerings, 
and  peace  offerings.  A  splendid  worship  went  on,  with 
costly  sacrifices  and  feasts  and  music.  It  was  the  wor- 
ship of  Yahweh,  not  of  other  gods,  and  was  regarded  as 
the  certain  means  of  securing  His  favour.  Yet  this 
worship  was  stained  by  revolting  vice,  introduced  from 
the  foulest  paganism  into  the  religion  of  Israel. 

As  the  Book  of  Amos  is  at  present  arranged,  the 
prophet  begins  with  prophecies  against  the  nations.     Of 


AMOSANDHOSEA  55 

the  six  non- Israelite  peoples  on  whom  judgment  is  de- 
nounced, five  are  condemned  for  cruelty.  The  sixth 
was  Moab,  whose  sin  was  that  it  burned  the  bones  of  the 
King  of  Edom  into  lime.  This  would  be  regarded  as 
an  outrage  on  the  sanctity  of  the  dead,  but  it  was  also  a 
carrying  of  vengeance  and  hatred  to  an  illegitimate  point, 
and  this  brings  it  within  the  same  class  as  the  others. 
Outrage  on  our  common  humanity  would  cover  all  the 
cases  mentioned.  It  might  seem  that  little  significance 
should  be  attached  to  the  condemnation  of  such  sins  in 
the  heathen,  since  they  could  not  be  blamed  for  idolatry, 
never  having  received  the  revelation  of  Yahweh.  But 
this  would  be  a  mistaken  view,  since  Israel,  Yahweh's 
people,  is  condemned  for  just  the  same  kind  of  sins, 
though  Israel's  sin  is  against  its  own  people,  while  that 
of  the  rest  is  sin  against  other  nations.  Probably  the 
condemnation  of  luxury  and  drunkenness  is  aimed  less 
at  these  sins  in  themselves  than  at  the  oppression  which 
they  entail.  The  prophet's  indignation  is  stirred  above 
all  by  cruelty  and  inhumanity ;  his  blood  boils  at  tyranny 
and  atrocities. 

This  implies  a  specific  conception  of  the  character  of 
Yahweh,  which  stood  in  the  sharpest  contrast  to  that  held 
by  the  Israelites  generally.  There  was  no  controversy 
as  to  the  fundamental  truth  that  Yahweh  was  Israel's 
God  and  that  Israel  was  Yahweh's  people.     Elijah  had 


56      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

stamped  this  truth  too  deeply  into  the  popular  conscious- 
ness for  Amos  to  need  to  convince  his  hearers  of  it.  The 
question  between  them  was  rather  how  this  relationship 
should  be  conceived,  and  what  was  its  bearing  on  practi- 
cal conduct.  If  Yahweh  stood  so  little  above  the  tribal 
gods  of  surrounding  peoples,  if  He  was  so  identified  with 
His  worshippers  in  character  and  fortunes  that  His  destiny 
was  linked  with  theirs,  then  He  could  not  look  on  their 
sins  with  any  degree  of  severity,  except  when  they  indi- 
cated disrespect  or  disloyalty  to  Himself  or  the  people, 
and  He  could  never  for  His  own  sake  contemplate  the 
destruction  of  Israel.  The  popular  view  might  not  have 
been  expressed  so  crudely  as  this,  but  practically  it 
amounted  to  this.  Though  Yahweh  had  chosen  Israel, 
having  the  power  to  choose  any  people,  yet  the  fact  that 
He  had  chosen  Israel,  and  not  another,  seemed  to  mean 
that  Israel  was  His  favourite,  and  would  be  treated  with 
the  utmost  indulgence.  The  nation  could  count  on  His 
help  and  protection,  if  it  performed  its  religious  duties, 
and  that  quite  irrespective  of  the  justice  of  its  cause. 
Amos  also  held  that  Yahweh  had  elected  Israel.  But 
He  might  have  chosen  any  other  nation,  for  all  were  sub- 
servient to  His  will.  With  a  far-reaching  glance  over  the 
peoples  and  a  wide  knowledge  of  their  past,  the  prophet 
asserts  that  they,  too,  as  well  as  Israel,  have  been  within 
the  sphere  of  Yahweh's  working,  and  are   instruments 


AMOSANDHOSEA  57 

for  the  accomplishment  of  His  plans.  If  He  brought 
Israel  from  Egypt,  He  also  brought  the  Philistines  from 
Caphtor  and  the  Syrians  from  Kir.  His  choice  of  Israel 
had  not,  therefore,  been  due  to  any  necessity,  but  was 
His  own  free  act.  This  choice  implied  no  favouritism 
on  Yahweh's  part  towards  Israel,  but  rather  a  higher 
standard  and  a  severer  retribution.  From  the  familiar 
premises  the  prophet  draws  a  new  and  startling  conclu- 
sion :  "  You  only  have  I  known  of  all  the  nations  of  the 
earth,  therefore  I  will  visit  upon  you  all  your  iniquities." 
All  this  presupposes  a  view  of  Yahweh's  character.  He 
is  above  all  things  a  moral  God,  and  what  specially  rouses 
His  anger  is  cruelty  or  oppression  of  the  weak  by  the 
strong.  The  utmost  zeal  in  the  ritual  service  weighed 
as  nothing  against  the  flagrant  injustice  of  the  upper 
classes.  Hence  the  prophet  speaks  of  the  sacrifices  with 
bitter  sarcasm  and  with  passionate  hate.  "  I  hate,  I 
despise  your  feasts,  and  I  will  take  no  delight  in  your 
solemn  assemblies.  Yea,  though  ye  offer  me  your  burnt 
offerings  and  meal  offerings,  I  will  not  accept  them, 
neither  will  I  regard  the  peace  offerings  of  your  fat 
beasts.  Take  thou  away  from  me  the  noise  of  thy 
songs,  for  I  will  not  hear  the  melody  of  thy  viols.  But 
let  judgment  roll  down  as  waters,  and  righteousness  as 
an  ever-flowing  stream."  So  sacrifices  and  feasts  and 
sacred  music  availed  nothing   to  win   His  favour,   as, 


58      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

indeed,  they  might  have  known  from  hunger  and  drought, 
mildew  and  pestilence.  But  now  a  more  terrible  judg- 
ment is  in  store  for  them.  The  people  talked  with  eager 
expectation  of  the  Day  of  Yahweh,  when  they  expected 
Him  to  crush  the  enemies  of  Israel,  and  place  her  in  a 
splendid  and  unassailable  position.  Amos  also  looks 
forward  to  the  Day  of  Yahweh.  But  it  will  be  a  day 
of  darkness  and  not  light.  It  will  come  as  an  unwelcome 
surprise,  a  crushing  judgment  rather  than  a  crowning 
victory. 

But  Yahweh  is  not  simply  the  righteous  God  of  Israel. 
He  is  the  God  of  Nature  and  the  God  of  History.  He 
has  guided  the  destinies  of  other  nations  in  the  past ; 
and  Assyria  is  the  instrument  of  judgment  in  His  hand. 
The  rain,  the  Wight  and  the  palmerworm,  famine  and 
pestilence,  are  all  at  His  disposal.  Even  if  with  several 
scholars  we  regard  as  later  insertions  the  three  passages 
in  which  Yahweh  is  definitely  affirmed  to  be  the  Creator 
(iv.  13,  V.  8,  9,  ix.  5,  6),  it  is  not  because  they  are  out  of 
harmony  with  the  prophet's  conception  of  His  relation 
to  the  world.  The  formal  statement  of  monotheism  may 
be  wanting  in  the  utterances  of  Amos  ;  the  thing  itself  is 
there. 

Such,  then,  is  Yahweh's  nature  and  character,  a  moral 
God  with  all  forces  under  His  control.  It  is  not  doubt- 
ful to  Amos  how  He  will  deal  with  a  nation  like  Israel. 


AMOSANDHOSEA  59 

They  may  still  seek  Yahweh  and  live.  But  this  is  not 
the  seeking  of  Him  in  the  sanctuaries  or  offering  abun- 
dance of  sacrifices.  They  seek  Yahweh  by  seeking  good 
and  hating  evil.  And  this  is  closely  connected  with 
establishing  judgment.  To  seek  good  is  to  seek  justice 
for  the  wronged  and  the  oppressed.  To  seek  Yahweh 
is  to  bring  their  conduct  into  harmony  with  His 
character. 

But  the  prophet  is  under  no  illusions  as  to  the  re- 
sponse of  Israel  to  his  warning,  or  the  fate  that  is  to 
come  upon  it.  Again  and  again  he  predicts  death  and 
captivity.  Whether  he  regarded  the  overthrow  of  Israel 
as  final  and  complete  is  a  question  which  depends  for 
its  solution  on  the  acceptance  or  rejection  of  ix.  8-15. 
As  the  text  stands,  the  issue  of  the  judgment  will  be  that 
all  the  sinners  will  be  exterminated,  but  a  righteous 
remnant  will  survive  to  form  a  new  Israel.  The  nation 
will  pass  through  a  long  process  of  sifting,  till  all  the 
chaff  is  gone ;  yet  not  the  smallest  grain  will  be  lost. 
The  new  Israel  will  be  set  in  its  own  land,  the  tabernacle 
of  David  will  again  be  raised,  and  the  surrounding  nations 
become  tributary.  All  nature  will  be  marvellously  fruitful, 
the  nation  will  rebuild  the  waste  cities  and  live  in  peace- 
ful and  perpetual  possession  of  its  land.  It  is  probable, 
however,  for  the  reasons  first  given  by  Wellhausen,  that 
we  should  regard  ix.  8-15  as  substituted  for  the  original 


6o      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

conclusion  of  the  book.  This  luscious  description  stands 
in  so  sharp  a  contrast  to  the  prophet's  declaration  of 
irretrievable  ruin,  that  we  can  hardly  suppose  that  he 
would  have  broken  the  force  of  his  warning  in  this  way. 
It  is,  moreover,  pitched  on  too  low  a  note  for  the  austere 
and  strenuous  Amos.  He  seems  to  have  expected  a 
judgment,  which  would  leave  not  even  a  remnant  beyond 
the  range  of  its  execution. 

When  Amos  uttered  his  sentence  of  doom  on  the 
northern  kingdom,  he  left  the  minister  of  God's  judg- 
ment unnamed.  But  while  Israel  had  never  seemed  so 
secure,  the  certainty  that  on  a  people  so  depraved  de- 
struction must  swiftly  come,  made  him  sensitive  to  signs 
of  change,  which  passed  unheeded  by  all  save  himself. 
He  turned  towards  Assyria,  and  as  he  listened  he  heard 
the  giant  stir  in  his  slumber,  and  he  knew  that  his  waking 
was  near.  It  came  when  Tiglath  Pileser,  one  of  the 
ablest  of  Assyrian  kings,  ascended  the  throne  in  745  B.C. 
Soon  after,  the  long  and  glorious  reign  of  Jeroboam  II. 
came  to  an  end.  When  his  strong  hand  was  removed, 
the  forces  of  disorder  broke  loose,  and  the  kingdom 
rapidly  fell  into  a  state  of  anarchy.  Six  kings  followed 
him  on  the  throne  of  Israel,  and  four  of  these  were 
murdered.  In  less  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  Samaria 
was  captured  (722  B.C.),  the  northern  kingdom  was 
destroyed,  and  the  people  were  carried  into  captivity. 


AMOSANDHOSEA  6i 

Henceforth  the  northern  tribes  lose  all  significance  for 
universal  history. 

Before  the  catastrophe,  however,  another  prophet 
laboured  in  the  northern  kingdom.  Hosea,  unlike 
Amos,  himself  belonged  to  it,  and  speaks  of  it  with  far 
less  detachment  than  his  predecessor.  While  Amos 
seems  to  have  prophesied  only  during  the  reign  of 
Jeroboam  II.,  Hosea's  ministry  fell  partly  in  his  reign, 
partly  in  the  troubled  period  which  followed  his  death. 
Since  he  makes  no  allusion  to  the  coalition  of  Syria  and 
Ephraim  against  Judah,  it  is  probable  that  none  of  his 
prophecies  are  later  than  735  B.C. 

His  characteristic  teaching  was  the  creation  of  his  own 
experience.  His  wife  Gomer,  the  daughter  of  Diblaim, 
proved  unfaithful  to  him  and  at  last  left  him.  When 
she  had  fallen  into  misery  through  desertion  by  her 
lovers,  and  was  to  be  sold  as  a  slave,  he  bought  her 
back  and  took  her  home.  Keeping  her  from  her  old 
evil  associations,  he  hoped  at  last  to  bring  her  to  peni- 
tence, and  on  her  reform  to  restore  the  old  relations. 
In  this  tragedy  which  had  blighted  his  life,  he  found  his 
message ;  for  in  his  own  relations  to  his  faithless  wife  he 
saw  a  reflection  of  the  relation  of  Yahweh  to  faithless 
Israel. 

Several  have  regarded  the  whole  account  of  his 
marriage  and  the  unfaithfulness  of  his  wife  as  an  alle- 


62      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

gory.  It  is  true  that  his  three  children  bore  symbolical 
names.  But  so  also  did  the  children  of  Isaiah,  who 
were  not  merely  allegories,  since  one  of  them  accom- 
panied his  father  to  his  memorable  interview  with  Ahaz. 
It  was  quite  natural  for  a  prophet  to  express  his  leading 
doctrines  in  symbolical  names  given  to  his  children. 
What  seems  to  be  fatal  to  the  allegorical  interpretation 
is  that  no  symbolical  meaning  can  with  any  plausibility 
be  attached  to  the  names  of  the  wife  or  her  father.  It 
is  further  urged  that  God  cannot  have  directed  Hosea  to 
marry  a  woman  of  immoral  life.  But  there  is  no  need 
to  suppose  she  was  such  when  he  married  her,  for  this  is 
not  the  only  example  in  which  a  prophet  does  something 
at  Yahweh's  command,  as  he  tells  us,  and  yet  it  is  only 
later  that  he  recognises  that  there  has  been  any  Divine 
impulse  at  all  {cf.  Jer.  xxxii.  8).  It  is  also  necessary  to 
assume  the  wife's  purity  at  the  time  of  marriage,  since 
otherwise  she  would  not  have  represented  Israel  in  her 
early  purity,  when  Yahweh  won  her  for  His  bride. 
Wellhausen,  followed  by  Nowack,  argues  that  Hosea  may 
not  have  recognised  his  wife's  unfaithfulness  so  early  as 
the  birth  of  his  first-born.  Since  he  gave  this  son  a 
symbolic  name  we  may  infer  that  he  had  already  become 
a  prophet,  so  that  if  Wellhausen  is  correct  it  would  not 
be  his  wife's  misconduct  that  caused  him  to  become  a 
prophet.    This  is,  in  fact,  very  likely,  but  it  does  nothing 


AMOSANDHOSEA  63 

to  diminish  the  importance  of  her  unfaithfulness  for  the 
origin  of  his  characteristic  teaching.  It  may,  indeed,  be 
plausibly  argued  that  this  teaching  only  slowly  emerged 
into  consciousness,  and  was  not  fully  wrought  out  till 
he  saved  his  wife  from  slavery  and  brought  her  back  to 
his  home.  What  is  of  vital  importance  is  not  what  first 
made  him  a  prophet,  but  what  it  was  that  made  him  the 
prophet  of  Yahweh's  inexhaustible  love.  He  may  have 
begun  as  a  prophet  of  judgment,  but,  if  so,  his  only 
significance  during  this  period  lay  in  the  fact  that  he 
continued  the  work  of  Amos.  What  gives  him  his 
unique  position  in  the  development  of  the  religion  of 
Israel  is  that  he  preached  Yahweh's  unfailing  love  for 
Israel  and  therefore  its  inevitable  reformation.  And  it 
was  his  own  experience  which  gave  him  this  insight  into 
the  love  of  God. 

The  prophecy  is  peculiarly  difficult  from  the  broken 
and  disjointed  style.  The  deep  sorrow  of  the  prophet 
for  his  wife's  sin  and  for  Israel's,  for  his  own  pain  and 
for  God's,  makes  his  language  at  times  almost  incoherent, 
and  it  is  all  the  more  obscure  on  account  of  its  con- 
ciseness and  fulness  of  meaning.  The  text  has  also  suf- 
fered much  corruption  in  the  process  of  transmission, 
and  several  passages  are  supposed  to  be  later  additions. 

The  saying  that  Amos  is  the  prophet  of  morality  but 
Hosea  is  the  prophet  of  religion  is  not  strictly  accurate, 


64      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

but  it  indicates  the  real  distinction  between  them.  To 
Amos  God  is  righteous,  and  conduct  is  the  nation's 
supreme  concern;  to  Hosea  God  is  love,  and  every- 
thing depends  on  Israel's  relation  to  Him.  The  in- 
dividual finds  no  place  in  either  Amos  or  Hosea,  but 
only  the  nation.  Thus  it  is  Israel,  and  not  the  individual 
Israelite,  who  is  the  object  of  Yahweh's  love.  The 
relationship  is  expressed  under  two  metaphors,  which 
mean  the  same  thing  essentially,  but  state  it  from 
different  points  of  view.  One  was  familiar  before  his 
time.  Yahweh  was  Israel's  Father.  When  he  was  a 
child  He  had  loved  him  and  called  His  son  out  of 
Egypt.  He  had  tended  him  with  affectionate  care,  but 
the  Father's  tender  love  had  been  repaid  with  ingratitude 
and  unfilial  disobedience.  The  other  metaphor,  while 
suggested  by  the  custom  of  regarding  a  god  as  the  hus- 
band of  his  land,  was  really  given  to  the  prophet  in  his 
own  experience.  The  popular  conception  opened  the 
way  for  false  and  degrading  ideas,  which  are  associated 
generally  with  nature  worship,  where  the  god  is  regarded 
as  the  giver  of  fertility  to  the  land.  Such  a  religion  is 
naturally  deeply  stained  with  immorality.  The  prophet 
purifies  the  conception  by  lifting  it  from  the  physical 
into  the  moral  domain.  Marriage  is  an  ethical  relation- 
ship ;  when  the  ethical  element  is  absent  there  can  be 
no  true  marriage.     He  had  learned  from  his  own  bitter 


AMOS    AND    HOSE  A  65 

sorrow  what  marriage  was,  and  it  was  the  depth  of  his 
insight  into  the  true  nature  of  marriage,  which  he  had 
gained  in  this  tragic  way,  that  quahfied  him  to  interpret 
aright  God's  marriage  to  Israel.  As  he  pondered  on 
his  own  lot,  he  saw  that  what  controlled  his  attitude  to 
his  wife  was  a  love  which  would  not  give  the  offender 
up,  but  with  untiring  patience  and  persistence  laboured 
and  suffered  that  she  might  be  won  back  to  purity. 
But  as  he  had  loved  Gomer,  so  Yahweh  had  loved 
Israel.  And  since  Yahweh  was  God  and  not  man,  it 
followed  that  the  noble  and  generous  qualities  present 
in  the  prophet  were  present  in  Yahweh  in  an  incompar- 
ably higher  degree.  Thus  he  rose  to  the  great  thought, 
"If  my  love  still  survives  this  wound;  if,  however  often 
trampled  on,  it  still  springs  up  anew ;  how  much  more 
must  Yahweh's  love  be  lavished  on  sinful  Israel,  un- 
crushed  by  the  grossest  ingratitude,  accepting  no  defeat, 
but  moving  patiently  to  its  goal,  shrinking  from  no 
punishment  of  the  offender  that  may  serve  His  end, 
till  she  is  restored  to  her  early  purity  and  meets  the 
love  of  Yahweh  with  whole-hearted  loyalty  ?  "  So  while 
Amos  strikes  the  keynote  of  his  prophecy  in  the  words : 
"You  only  have  I  known  of  all  the  nations  of  the  earth, 
therefore  I  will  visit  upon  you  all  your  iniquities,"  the 
keynote  of  Hosea  is  struck  in  the  words,  "  How  can  I 
give  thee  up,  Ephraim  ?  " 

£ 


66      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

But  while  the  love  of  Yahweh  is  Hosea's  fundamental 
doctrine,  this  love  was  not  conceived  as  a  weak  tender- 
ness for  Israel's  sin.  Just  as  the  doctrine  of  the  Divine 
Fatherhood  involves  a  more  stringent  ethical  ideal  than 
the  doctrine  of  the  Divine  Sovereignty,  so  the  love  of 
Yahweh  demands  a  higher  ethical  standard  than  His 
righteousness.  For  righteousness  is  concerned  especially 
for  conduct,  hence  Amos  bends  his  energies  to  secure 
a  w^ell- regulated  State,  in  which  oppression  and  cruelty 
have  ceased  and  impartial  justice  is  done.  But  love 
seeks  for  its  object  the  highest  good,  and  since  Yahweh 
is  Himself  the  Holy  One  of  Israel,  He  cannot  be  satisfied 
till  the  people  that  He  loves  is  pure.  His  love  is 
penetrated  by  an  ethical  spirit,  and  its  manifestations  are 
controlled  by  the  imperious  claims  of  morality.  It  is 
not  simply  an  outwardly  correct  conduct  that  He  requires, 
but  a  heart  wholly  at  one  with  His  own.  And  just 
because  there  is  no  severity  like  the  severity  of  love,  the 
demand  of  Hosea  is  more  searching  and  penetrating  than 
that  of  Amos.  The  latter  sees  the  mischief  before  his 
eyes,  but  he  does  not  seek  into  its  cause.  Hosea  probes 
below^  the  surface,  and  finds  the  spring  of  all  the  evil  in 
the  false  relation  in  w^hich  Israel  stands  to  Yahweh.  She 
had  broken  the  conditions  of  the  marriage  covenant, 
and  the  priests  especially  were  to  blame  that  the  people 
perished  from  lack  of  knowledge      Want  of  true  morality 


AMOSANDHOSEA  67 

arose  out  of  a  want  of  true  religion.  Hence  Hosea 
does  not,  like  Amos,  urge  the  people  to  change  their 
conduct  so  much  as  to  return  to  Yahweh,  when  right 
conduct  would  follow  of  itself.  The  people  probably 
regarded  themselves  as  zealous  worshippers  of  Yahweh. 
But  this  worship  was  so  contaminated  by  heathen 
elements,  that  Hosea  could  see  nothing  in  it  but  worship 
of  the  Baalim.  In  other  words,  he  did  not  recognise 
their  Yahweh  as  the  true  Yahweh  at  all ;  though  they 
named  him  Yahweh,  he  was  no  better  than  a  Baal. 

His  own  experience  may  have  made  him  more  keenly 
sensitive  to  the  evils  of  his  time.  As  he  looked  around 
he  saw  that  his  own  was  no  isolated  case.  The  whole 
land  was  full  of  open  and  flagrant  sin.  There  was 
nought  but  swearing  and  breaking  faith,  and  killing  and 
stealing  and  committing  adultery  (iv.  2).  And  beneath 
this  open  manifestation  lay  a  complete  absence  of  truth 
and  mercy  and  the  knowledge  of  God. 

While  Amos  saw  no  way  of  mending  the  condition  of 
things  save  by  extermination  of  Israel,  this  solution  of 
the  problem  w^as  impossible  to  Hosea.  Though  he  was 
even  more  sensitive  to  the  sin  of  Israel,  the  love  of 
Yahweh  assured  him  of  her  ultimate  amendment.  But 
between  the  terrible  present  and  the  happy  future  lies 
the  period  of  chastisement.  The  settled  agricultural 
life  in  Canaan  had  led  to  the  intrusion  of  elements  into 


68      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

the  religion  of  Israel  borrowed  from  the  Canaanites. 
Israel  must  therefore  be  wrenched  away  from  the  soil, 
that  a  complete  breach  with  all  these  abuses  might  be 
secured.  Then  in  the  desert,  where  agriculture  could 
not  be  practised,  she  would  return  to  Yahweh,  who  would 
speak  to  her  heart  as  in  the  old  desert  life  after  the 
Exodus,  and  she  would  make  answer  as  in  the  days  of 
her  youth,  when  Yahweh  brought  her  out  of  Egypt.  He 
would  heal  all  her  backslidings  and  she  would  be  freely 
forgiven  and  loved.  Then  Yahweh  would  once  more 
betroth  her  unto  Him  in  loyal  love,  and  bring  her  back 
to  her  own  land.  And  in  it  the  soil  would  again  be 
tilled,  and  she  would  know  that  it  was  Yahweh  and  not 
the  Baalim  who  gave  her  the  corn  and  the  wine  and  the 
oil.  Thus  Hosea  disengaged  the  life  of  civilisation 
from  the  perils  which  threatened  the  religion,  and  suc- 
ceeded in  making  an  alliance  between  civilisation  and 
the  religion  of  Israel. 


CHAPTER   V 

ISAIAH  AND  MICAH 

With  the  fall   of  Samaria  the   task  of  preserving  the 

higher  religion  of  Israel  was  entrusted  to  the  southern 

kingdom.      We  know  but  little    of   the   history    of  its 

religion  during  the  period  from  Rehoboam  to  Uzziah. 

In  one  respect  Judah  fared  more   favourably  than  the 

sister-kingdom.       It  enjoyed  greater  political    stability, 

for   the   permanence    of    the    Davidic    dynasty    largely 

secured  it  against  the  shock  of  constant  revolution  and 

civil  war.     Life  seems  to  have  been  simpler  and  more 

frugal.     It  was  also  tamer,  without  the  stir  and  colour 

which  lent  it    a  richer  interest  in   the   north.     Of  its 

religious  quality  much  the  same  thing  may  probably  be 

said.     It  was   the  northern    kingdom  which    produced 

Elijah,    Elisha,    and    Hosea.     It   is    true   that  the  two 

former  were  called  to  their  work  by  a  crisis  which  had 

no  counterpart  in  Judah,   for  Athaliah's    reign   was   a 

mere  episode,  and  the  worship  of  Melkart  remained  an 

excrescence,  foreign  to  the  religious  temper  of  the  people. 

Israel    seems    to    have    been    more   hospitable    to    this 

69 


70      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

worship,  but  even  here  it  is  easy  to  exaggerate.  What 
proves  most  conclusively  where  the  centre  of  gravity 
really  lay  is  that  Amos,  though  he  belonged  to  Judah, 
was  sent  not  to  his  own  countrymen  but  to  Israel.  Yet 
it  was  not  the  destruction  of  Samaria  which  was  respon- 
sible for  the  rise  of  a  great  prophet  in  Judah.  For 
when  Samaria  fell,  nearly  half  of  Isaiah's  prophetic 
career  had  run  its  course.  And  while  it  was  largely  true 
that  the  tides  of  life  ran  more  swiftly  in  the  north,  yet 
during  the  half  century  which  preceded  the  call  of 
Isaiah  a  similar  expansion  of  wealth  had  been  experi- 
enced, with  the  social  evils  which  came  in  its  train.  It 
was  to  the  conditions  thus  created  that  the  ministry  of 
Isaiah  and  Micah  was  addressed. 

The  starting-point  for  the  interpretation  of  Isaiah  is 
the  vision  in  which,  about  740  B.C.,  his  call  and  his  mes- 
sage came  to  him.  Standing  at  the  Temple  threshold 
he  passes  into  an  ecstasy,  in  which  he  has  a  vision 
of  Yahweh  exalted  in  majesty.  His  greatness  is  pro- 
claimed by  the  attitude  of  the  attendant  seraphim,  who 
do  not  venture  to  look  upon  Him  and  shroud  them- 
selves from  His  gaze,  while  they  are  alert  to  do  His  will. 
His  holiness  is  proclaimed  by  their  unceasing  cry,  "  Holy, 
holy,  holy,  is  Yahweh  of  hosts.''  At  this  cry  the  founda- 
tions quiver  beneath  Isaiah's  feet,  and  the  Temple  is  filled 
with  the  smoke  of  Yahweh's  wrath  that  an  unclean  man 


ISAIAH    AND    MICAH  71 

should  have  dared  to  cross  the  threshold  of  His  house. 
Isaiah  is  crushed  by  the  sense  of  his  own  uncleanness 
as  he  gazes  on  the  holy  God,  and  of  the  uncleanness  of 
those  in  whose  midst  he  dwells.  Then  the  humbled 
and  penitent  man  is  touched  by  the  living  coal,  and  his 
lips  are  thus  fitted  to  join  in  Yahweh's  praise.  At  last 
he  is  fit  to  hear  God's  voice  and  receive  His  call.  So 
he  offers  himself  for  the  mission  of  which  as  yet  he 
knows  nothing,  and  is  bidden  preach  to  the  people,  with 
the  assurance  at  the  outset  that  the  message  will  but 
harden  them  in  their  evil  ways,  and  that  his  mission  will 
prove  a  failure. 

In  this  vision  Isaiah's  most  characteristic  doctrines 
are  revealed.  Yahweh's  majesty  fills  him  with  a  sense 
of  the  insignificance  of  earthly  things,  even  the  greatest. 
Because  he  has  seen  Yahweh  high  and  lifted  up,  he 
knows  that  there  is  to  be  a  Day  of  Yahweh  on  all  that  is 
high  and  lifted  up  on  earth.  All  human  magnificence 
will  be  abased  when  Yahweh  rises  to  judge  the  world. 
He  has  realised  the  holiness  of  Yahweh,  and  in  the  light 
of  it  has  understood  as  never  before  the  uncleanness  of 
Yahweh's  people.  But  a  holy  God  cannot  permanently 
tolerate  an  unclean  people.  And  since  the  prophet  is 
convinced  beforehand  that  the  people  will  not  accept 
his  message,  the  only  solution  is  a  judgment  in  which 
the  sinful  will  be  destroyed.     Assyria  is  the  instrument 


72      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

in  Yahweh's  hands  to  effect  this  cleansing.  Whether 
his  characteristic  doctrine  of  the  remnant  was  expressed 
in  his  vision  is  not  clear.  If  with  the  Septuagint  we 
omit  the  words,  "  So  the  holy  seed  is  the  stock  thereof," 
the  chapter  leaves  us  with  a  picture  of  unrelieved 
desolation.  Yet  the  doctrine  must  have  been  formnlated 
so  early  in  his  ministry  that  it  is  simplest  to  refer  its 
origin  to  his  vision.  For  he  gave  his  son,  who  cannot 
have  been  born  long  after,  the  name  Shear-Yashub, 
which  means  that  a  remnant  will  return  to  Yahweh,  and 
expresses  a  foreboding  of  terrible  judgment,  lightened 
by  the  belief  that  a  very  small  remnant  would  escape. 
Even  if  not  directly  given  in  his  vision,  the  doctrine  of 
the  remnant  may  have  arisen  out  of  reflection  on  it.  As 
he  had  turned  to  Yahweh  and  realised  the  forgiveness  of 
his  sin,  so  others  like-minded  with  himself  might  also 
turn  and  Hve.  Moreover,  in  spite  of  the  example  set  by 
Amos,  it  was  intrinsically  more  probable  that  he  should 
adopt  this  view  than  that  he  should  look  for  the  com- 
plete extermination  of  Israel.  The  election  of  Israel 
meant  that  the  nation  had  a  place  in  the  Divine  plan, 
which  would  be  thwarted  if  its  existence  came  to  an  end. 
Or  if  it  was  not  ultimately  thwarted,  since  Yahweh  might 
choose  another  people  to  serve  His  purpose,  yet  this 
would  cast  a  reflection  on  His  wisdom  in  choosing  a 
nation  that  proved  unequal  to  His  demand.     Moreover, 


ISAIAH    AND    MICAH  73 

since  it  was  in  the  temple  of  Jerusalem  that  Isaiah  had 
seen  Yahweh,  he  felt  that  because  Zion  was  Yahweh's 
throne  it  could  not  be  destroyed.  And  the  indestruc- 
tibility of  Zion  may  have  seemed  to  imply  the  indestruc- 
tibility of  Israel. 

The  present  condition  of  His  people  he  views  in  the 
light  of  Yahweh's  holiness,  i.e.  not  simply  of  His 
righteousness  or  His  love,  but  His  character  taken  in  its 
completeness.  The  sins  of  Judah  are  similar  to  those 
of  Israel,  except  that  the  former  seems  to  have  been  less 
tainted  with  sins  of  impurity.  Isaiah  denounces  in  the 
strongest  terms  the  oppression  of  the  poor  and  defence- 
less by  the  rich  and  powerful,  the  shameless  perversion 
of  judgment  and  the  corruption  of  the  government,  the 
adding  of  house  to  house  and  field  to  field,  the  riotous 
living  of  the  men  and  luxury  of  the  women.  He  attacks 
their  superstition  and  idolatry,  their  resort  to  soothsayers 
and  necromancers.  Their  whole  attitude  to  Yahweh  is 
full  of  sin.  They  do  not  repay  the  care  He  has  lavished 
upon  them,  but  are  rebellious  and  ungrateful.  Their 
worship  is  full  of  formality,  their  service  of  Yahweh  with 
sacrifices  most  assiduous,  but  they  have  no  care  for 
justice  or  morality.  Some  have  sunk  to  such  a  depth 
that  they  make  themselves  the  slaves  of  sin,  and  impiously 
defy  Yahweh  to  do  His  worst.  Their  treatment  of  the 
prophets  is  part  of  their  treatment  of  the  God  who  has 


74      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

sent  them.  They  forbid  them  to  speak  right  things,  and 
beg  them  to  prophesy  hes.  They  scornfully  mock  their 
message,  and  profanely  imitate  Isaiah's  mannerisms  and 
the  repetition  of  his  words.  The  politicians  seek  to 
conceal  from  him  their  negotiations  for  an  alliance  with 
Egypt  (a  striking  proof  of  his  political  influence),  and 
their  conduct  is  tantamount  to  an  attempt  to  conceal 
them  from  Yahweh.  They  are  haughty  and  conceited,  and 
victims  of  such  infatuation  that  in  presence  of  the  greatest 
danger  they  preserve  an  attitude  of  carelessness,  as  though 
all  must  come  right  in  the  end,  and  believe  they  have 
secured  immunity  from  death.  There  was  also  great 
perversion  of  moral  distinction,  a  calling  of  good  evil 
and  evil  good.  And  sin  had  reached  well-nigh  the 
lowest  depth  in  its  utter  shamelessness. 

Although  the  prophet  does  not  believe  that  the 
problem  presented  by  the  sin  of  Judah  will  be  solved  in 
any  other  way  than  by  the  extermination  of  the  sinful, 
he  yet  urgently  counsels  reformation.  They  might  wash 
and  be  clean,  cease  to  do  evil,  learn  to  do  well,  and 
uphold  the  cause  of  justice.  They  might  walk  in  the 
light  of  Yahweh,  and  turn  to  Him  from  whom  they 
had  so  deeply  revolted.  But  since  few  would  do  this, 
judgment  was  inevitable.  And  the  instrument  of  judg- 
ment the  prophet  saw  in  Assyria.  This  brings  us  to  a 
consideration  of  Isaiah's  foreign  policy. 


ISAIAH    AND    MICAH  75 

The  question  of  Judah's  relation  to  Assyria  rose 
quite  early  in  Isaiah's  ministry.  To  repel  the  coalition 
of  Syria  and  Ephraim  against  Judah  about  735  B.C., 
which  was  probably  intended  to  force  her  into  an  alli- 
ance against  Assyria,  Ahaz  in  a  panic  proposed  to  call  in 
the  aid  of  Assyria.  This  meant  the  subjection  of  the 
petty  State  to  the  great  Empire,  and  the  tribute  exacted 
would  press  most  heavily  upon  the  poor,  already  ground 
down  by  the  wealthy.  Thus  internal  reform,  Judah's 
sorest  necessity,  would  become  more  difficult.  Whereas 
Amos  and  Hosea  held  aloof,  so  far  as  we  know,  from 
politics,  Isaiah  played  a  prominent  part  as  a  statesman. 
He  consistently  advised  Judah  to  remain  quiet  and 
avoid  entanglement  with  great  empires.  So  small  a 
State  should  renounce  the  ambition  to  shine  in  the 
politics  of  the  world,  or  she  would  be  caught  into  a 
current  too  strong  for  her,  and  lose  all  power  of  inde- 
pendent action.  When  the  king,  under  the  pretext  of 
piety,  refused  the  sign  offered  him  by  the  prophet  for 
his  choice,  Isaiah  sought  to  shame  his  unbelief  by  the 
faith  of  the  mother  who  would  express  in  the  name 
Immanuel,  which  she  would  give  to  her  child,  the  con- 
fidence that  God  was  with  His  people.  But  it  was  in 
vain  that  he  dissuaded  Ahaz  by  this  example  from  call- 
ing in  Assyria,  and  assured  him  that  Syria  and  Ephraim 
were  too  insignificant  to  harm  him,  and  would  soon  be 


76      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

brought  to  nought.  Assyria  suppressed  the  coaHtion, 
as  her  own  interests  would  speedily  have  forced  her  to 
do,  but  Ahaz  bought  relief  with  the  independence  of  his 
country.  Judah  soon  began  to  fret  under  the  Assyrian 
yoke,  and  formed  plans  of  revolt  with  the  smaller  nation- 
alities of  Palestine  or  with  Babylon.  These  were  sedu- 
lously fostered  by  Egypt,  which  used  these  smaller 
nations  to  weaken  for  its  own  ends  the  power  of  Assyria. 
A  strong  party  in  Judah  favoured  an  Egyptian  alliance 
and  a  spirited  foreign  policy.  Isaiah,  in  the  presence  of 
this  infatuation,  stood  firm  to  his  policy  of  acquiescence 
in  things  as  they  were.  Now  that  his  advice  had  been 
disregarded  he  condemned  all  attempts  to  extricate 
the  nation  from  its  connection  with  Assyria.  They 
could  only  make  matters  worse.  The  keynote  of  his 
whole  policy  is  struck  in  the  words  :  "  Returning  and 
resting  shall  ye  be  saved,  in  quietness  and  confidence 
shall  be  your  strength."  No  human  power  could  stay 
Assyria's  onward  march;  only  when  the  task  assigned 
it  by  Yahweh  was  complete  could  it  be  overthrown. 
Judah  must  wait  patiently,  confident  that  Zion  could 
not  be  destroyed,  and  that  at  the  right  moment  Yahweh 
would  break  Assyria's  power.  We  can  easily  see  how 
the  policy  of  Isaiah  grew  out  of  his  vision.  Yahweh's 
majesty  had  filled  him  with  a  sense  of  His  might  and 
glory  and  the  utter  emptiness  of  all  human  greatness. 


ISAIAH    AND    MIC  AH  77 

Even  Assyria  could  not  overawe  him  after  that.  But 
when  Assyria  had  entered  into  the  poHtics  of  Judah,  his 
certainty  that  it  was  the  rod  of  Yahweh's  anger  made 
him  counsel  submission  and  steadily  discourage  the 
policy  of  an  Egyptian  alliance.  Nevertheless,  when, 
after  the  death  of  Sargon,  the  movement  for  revolt  could 
no  longer  be  held  in  check,  and  the  madness  of  Judah's 
politicians  was  demonstrated  by  terrible  disaster,  his 
conviction  that  Zion  would  not  be  destroyed  and  that 
a  remnant  would  survive  assured  him  even  in  the 
darkest  hour  that  Assyria  would  be  broken  on  Yahweh's 
mountain. 

The  doctrine  of  the  happy  future  that  was  to  follow 
does  not  spring  directly  out  of  his  vision.  Yet  it 
followed  from  Yahweh's  dwelling  on  Zion  and  the  sur- 
vival of  a  holy  remnant.  When  the  sin  of  Judah  had 
been  removed,  Yahweh's  reign  over  it  could  not  be  other 
than  full  of  blessedness.  Unhappily  much  uncertainty 
hangs  over  any  detailed  presentation  of  the  prophet's 
views  on  account  of  the  critical  problems  raised  about 
many  of  the  eschatological  passages.  It  may  be  re- 
garded as  settled  that  the  following  sections  are  not  by 
Isaiah:  chaps,  xii.,  xiii.  i-xiv.  23,  xxi.  i-io,  xxiv.- 
xxvii.,  xxxiv.,  xxxv.,  xl.-lxvi.  But  to  this  list  a  good 
deal  more  may  be  added  with  considerable  probability, 
including  ii.  2-4,  iv.  2-6,  xi.   10-16,  xix.  18-25,  xxxiii., 


78      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

possibly  also  xxxii.  This  position  is  conservative  com- 
pared with  that  held  by  critics  like  Duhm,  Hackmann, 
Cheyne,  Volz,  and  Marti,  though  Duhm  regards  chap.  ii. 
2-4  as  by  Isaiah,  and  with  reference  to  several  other 
questions  adopts  a  less  radical  view.  Especially  is  this 
the  case  with  the  most  important  of  all  the  problems 
concerned,  that  of  the  authenticity  of  the  two  Messianic 
passages,  chaps,  ix.  1-7  and  xi.  1-8.  The  arguments 
urged  against  Isaiah's  authorship  are  not  at  all  con- 
clusive, and  there  are  serious  objections  to  placing  them 
in  the  post-exilic  period.  It  was  natural  for  Isaiah,  with 
the  Davidic  monarchy  before  him,  to  anticipate  its  per- 
petuation in  the  era  of  blessedness  that  he  expected 
soon  to  open,  when  the  sinful  had  been  slain  by  Assyria, 
and  Assyria  in  her  turn  had  been  destroyed.  Moreover, 
if  the  passages  had  been  written  in  the  later  period  we 
should  have  expected  prominence  to  be  given  to  the 
restoration  to  Palestine  of  the  Jews  from  the  Dispersion, 
but  this  is  quite  absent  from  them.  Accordingly  it  is 
best  to  regard  them  as  by  Isaiah.  He  speaks  in  lofty 
language  of  this  king,  whom  for  convenience  we  may 
call  the  Messiah,  though  Isaiah  does  not  use  the  term. 
He  springs  from  the  stock  of  Jesse,  and  bears  a  wonder- 
ful name.  He  passes  through  battles  and  victory  to  a 
reign  of  peace  and  righteousness.  The  spirit  of  Yahweh 
will  rest  upon  him  and  equip  him  with  all  the  qualities 


ISAIAH    AND    MIC  AH  79 

necessary  for  right  government.  He  will  defend  the 
meek  and  slay  the  wicked. 

Little  need  be  added  on  Micah,  who  was  Isaiah's 
contemporary,  and,  as  we  learn  from  Jer.  xxvi.  18, 
prophesied  in  the  reign  of  Hezekiah.  The  northern 
kingdom  had  not  fallen  when  he  began  his  work,  and  he 
predicts  its  utter  overthrow.  For  the  most  part  he  is 
concerned  with  Judah,  his  native  country.  He  was  a 
man  of  the  people  like  Amos,  and,  like  him,  looked  at  the 
oppression  of  the  poor  by  the  governing  classes  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  class  oppressed.  The  sins  of  which 
he  accuses  them  are  those  attacked  by  Isaiah,  but  he  is 
more  definite  in  his  description  and  more  scathing  in  his 
denunciation.  He  had  no  belief  in  the  indestructibility 
of  Zion,  but  predicts  that  it  shall  be  ploughed  as  a  field 
and  the  temple  laid  in  ruins.  We  learn  from  the  Book 
of  Jeremiah  that  this  had  a  salutary  effect  upon  Judah. 
Like  Isaiah,  he  gives  a  very  unflattering  account  of  the 
prophets  of  his  time,  and  asserts  his  own  inspiration  to 
declare  his  message  of  judgment.  Whether  he  added 
to  this  a  message  of  consolation  is  very  uncertain. 
There  is  at  present  a  strong  tendency  among  scholars  to 
restrict  Micah's  own  work  to  the  first  three  chapters  of 
the  book  that  bears  his  name. 

The  close  of  the  eighth  century  proved  extremely 
critical.     The  restive  politicians  of  Judah  made  a  vain 


8o      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

attempt  to  win  back  from  Assyria  the  freedom  which 
Ahaz  had  bartered  for  the  relief  she  had  afforded  from 
Syria  and  Ephraim.  In  701  Sennacherib  invaded  Judah. 
He  inflicted  irreparable  damage  on  the  country,  took 
away  more  than  two  hundred  thousand  captives  to 
Assyria,  and  exacted  an  enormous  indemnity.  Not  con- 
tent with  this,  he  demanded  the  surrender  of  Jerusalem, 
which  alone  of  the  cities  of  Judah  remained  uncaptured, 
and  purposed  to  carry  the  inhabitants  into  exile.  The 
faith  of  Isaiah  that  Jerusalem  could  not  be  taken 
received  a  splendid  vindication.  Judah  thus  gained  a 
respite  which  saved  her  religion  for  the  world.  The 
overthrow  of  Samaria  and  the  captivity  of  northern 
Israel  meant  the  disappearance  of  its  religion,  so  far  as 
can  be  seen,  and  had  Judah  gone  into  captivity  in  701, 
the  religion  of  Israel  would  have  become  altogether 
extinct.  As  yet  the  higher  religion  had  barely  taken 
root ;  it  could  not  have  survived  the  terrible  ordeal  of 
transplantation.  The  religion  was  so  inextricably  united 
with  the  nation  that  to  have  been  plucked  up  by  the 
roots  with  it  would  have  involved,  as  it  did  for  the 
northern  tribes,  the  destruction  of  nation  and  religion 
alike.  It  was  largely  due  to  Isaiah  that  when,  rather 
more  than  a  century  later,  Jerusalem  was  captured  and 
destroyed  and  the  people  were  carried  into  captivity,  the 
religion  survived  the  shock.     He  seems  to  have  entrusted 


ISAIAH    AND    MICAH  8i 

his  teaching  to  a  band  of  disciples,  who  worked  for  the 
realisation  of  his  ideals.  Even  in  his  lifetime  it  bore 
fruit  in  the  reformation  of  Hezekiah.  This  was  but  the 
forerunner  of  a  far  greater  achievement,  which  was  of 
truly  epoch-making  significance  for  the  development  of 
the  religion. 


CHAPTER   VI 

THE    DEUTERONOMIC   REFORMATION 

It  may  seem  at  first  sight  surprising  that  the  vindica- 
tion of  Isaiah  by  the  fulfihnent  of  his  predictions  should 
have  been  followed  by  the  reaction  under  Manasseh, 
during  which  the  old  abuses  crept  back  and  new  cults 
were  imported  from  abroad.  We  must,  however,  re- 
member that  matters  were  in  the  most  deplorable  con- 
dition. Jerusalem,  it  is  true,  remained  standing  and  the 
Temple  was  untouched.  But  the  population  was  terribly 
reduced  by  the  loss  of  more  than  two  hundred  thousand 
captives,  and  the  wealth  of  the  country  was  depleted  by 
payment  of  an  enormous  indemnity.  The  Assyrian  yoke 
remained  fixed  as  firmly  as  ever.  To  a  people  thus 
exhausted  and  despondent  the  gods  of  the  oppressor 
seemed  mightier  than  their  own.  It  was  therefore  not 
unnatural  that  foreign  cults  made  their  way  into  Judah 
in  a  manner  hitherto  unexampled.  Manasseh,  who  came 
to  the  throne  quite  young  and  reigned  for  about  half  a 
century,  actively  fostered  this  new  movement,  and  seems 

to  have  instituted  a  violent  and  relentless  persecution, 
82 


DEUTERONOMIC    REFORMATION    83 

in  which  many  who  held  fast  to  the  exclusive  worship  of 
Yahweh  suffered  martyrdom.  The  adoration  of  the 
heavenly  bodies,  and  especially  of  the  Queen  of  Heaven, 
received  great  prominence,  and  the  hideous  custom  of 
child-sacrifice  attained  dimensions  never  before  reached 
in  Israel.  We  need  not  assume  that  the  worship  of 
Yahweh  was  suppressed.  These  practices  were  regarded 
as  compatible  with  an  adherence  to  the  national  Deity. 
The  so-called  sacrifices  to  Moloch  were  probably  really 
offered  to  Yahweh  under  the  title  of  Melek  or  King. 

The  successors  of  Isaiah  were  thus  driven  from  public 
life  to  work  in  secret,  and  prepare  for  a  great  reform 
when  the  time  was  ripe.  It  is  perhaps  from  the  reign  of 
Manasseh  that  one  of  the  greatest  among  the  prophetic 
utterances  has  come  to  us.  In  reply  to  the  question 
with  what  costly  offering,  with  what  sacrifice,  even  of  his 
dearest,  man  could  win  the  favour  of  God,  the  word  is 
spoken  :  "  He  hath  shewed  thee,  O  man,  what  is  good, 
and  what  doth  Yahweh  require  of  thee,  but  to  do  justly, 
and  to  love  mercy,  and  to  walk  humbly  with  thy  God  ?  " 
Here  with  unclouded  insight,  and  with  a  simplicity  of 
expression  w^hich  matches  the  grandeur  of  the  thought, 
we  find  the  essence  of  the  prophetic  teaching.  Vain  are 
all  material  offerings,  the  blood  of  victims  or  rivers  of 
oil.  Vain,  too,  the  surrender  of  the  first-born  that  the 
soul's    guilt    might    be    purged    away.     Yahweh    asked 


84      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

nothing  for  Himself,  save  a  reverent  humility  of  spirit, 
and  conformity  with  His  character.  But  justice  to  the 
wronged,  mercy  to  the  helpless  and  oppressed,  duties 
so  flagrantly  forgotten,  those  were  His  requirements,  and 
for  failure  to  fulfil  them  no  extravagance  of  ritual  could 
atone. 

It  is  perhaps  also  to  this  period  that  we  should 
assign  the  composition  of  the  book  which  subsequently 
gave  the  impulse  to  Josiah's  Reformation.  Many 
scholars  beUeve  that  it  w^as  deliberately  composed  during 
the  reign  of  Josiah  with  a  view  to  bringing  about  the 
Reformation.  We  cannot  very  well  understand,  if  this 
was  the  case,  why,  with  so  well-disposed  a  king  on  the 
throne,  and  in  view  of  the  uncertainties  of  life,  the 
Reformers  should  have  permitted  so  long  a  period  to 
elapse  that  they  did  not  produce  their  book  till  the 
eighteenth  year  of  Josiah's  reign  (621  B.C.).  More- 
over, the  fact  that  where  the  interests  of  the  priests  at 
Jerusalem  were  touched  the  Law-book  failed  to  secure 
obedience,  seems  to  make  it  unlikely  that  its  discovery 
was  planned  with  their  connivance.  It  is  more  likely 
that  the  book  was  older,  and  that  its  discovery  was 
genuine.  If  so,  the  reign  of  Manasseh  is  the  most  pro- 
bable date  for  its  composition.  It  is  by  no  means  clear 
precisely  what  it  contained.  It  can  hardly  be  questioned, 
in  view  of  the  close  parallelism  between  its  injunctions 


DEUTERONOMIC    REFORMATION    85 

and  the  reform  carried  through  by  Josiah,  that  it  is  to  be 
sought  in  the  Book  of  Deuteronomy.  Roughly  speaking, 
the  original  book  may  be  taken  to  have  embraced 
Deut.  v.-xxvi.,  xxviii.,  though  here  and  there  these 
chapters  contain  subsequent  expansions. 

The  destruction  of  the  great  sanctuaries  in  the 
northern  kingdom  left  the  Temple  at  Jerusalem  without 
a  rival.  The  fact  that  the  capital  alone  had  been  spared 
when  the  other  cities  of  Judah  had  been  destroyed,  that 
after  taking  these  cities  Sennacherib  had  been  prevented 
from  capturing  Jerusalem  just  when  it  seemed  within  his 
grasp,  vindicated  the  true  inspiration  of  Isaiah,  enhanced 
the  prestige  of  the  city,  and  fixed  the  indestructibility  of 
Zion  and  its  Temple  as  an  axiom  in  the  mind  of  the 
people.  And  since  the  time  of  David,  Jerusalem  had 
always  had  a  pre-eminence  in  its  possession  of  the  ark. 
The  conditions  were  thus  favourable  for  the  abolition  of 
the  high  places  or  local  sanctuaries,  and  the  centralisation 
of  worship  at  the  Temple,  thus  gaining  for  it  an  ex- 
clusive legitimacy.  This  was  the  leading  reform  con- 
templated by  the  unknown  author  to  whom  we  owe  the 
book.  He  was  the  heir  of  the  great  prophets  of  the  eighth 
century,  but  he  shows  a  concern  for  the  externals  of 
religion  in  a  degree  quite  foreign  to  them.  In  him  the 
priest  and  the  prophet  have  met,  and  the  author  sets  in 
the  forefront  of  his  programme  a  reform   of  the  cultus. 


S6      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

Yet  it  would  do  him  an  injustice  to  miss  the  deeper 
moral  and  spiritual  elements  in  his  work.  Whole-hearted 
love  of  God  and  devotion  to  Him  is  made  the  spring  of 
all  action.  This  is  to  control  the  life  of  society  and  the 
home,  as  well  as  the  relation  of  man  to  God  and  the  per- 
formance of  the  strictly  reHgious  duties.  Love  of  others 
is  made  secondary  only  to  the  love  of  God.  A  lofty 
moral  standard  is  throughout  maintained,  and  the 
humanitarian  temper  of  the  Law  is  one  of  its  most 
striking  features.  The  author's  theory  of  retribution,  of 
the  invariable  connection  between  righteousness  and 
temporal  prosperity,  had  its  value,  but  created  serious 
difficulties  when  events  showed  it  to  be  inadequate  to 
explain  the  facts  of  life,  and  led  to  such  a  protest  as  we 
find  in  the  Book  of  Job.  And  even  the  reform  of  the 
cultus  was  for  the  author  but  a  means  to  an  end.  The 
abolition  of  the  local  sanctuaries  purified  the  worship  of 
Yahweh,  for  the  high  places  were  the  seat  of  many 
abuses.  It  strengthened  monotheism,  for  one  place  of 
worship  involved  as  its  correlate  one  God.  It  is  true 
that  at  the  high  places  it  was  Yahweh  who  was 
worshipped.  But  the  inevitable  result  at  that  stage  of 
development  was  that  the  unity  of  Yahweh  should  be 
dissolved  by  His  differentiation  into  a  large  number  of 
local  Yahwehs.  The  author  emphatically  asserts  that 
Yahweh  is  one.     And  he  insists  equally  that  Yahweh 


DEUTERONOMIC    REFORMATION    87 

alone  is  to  be  worshipped;  idolatry  is  repeatedly  for- 
bidden, and  the  severest  punishment  for  it  is  enjoined. 

The  injunctions  of  the  Law  were  carried  out  in  a 
drastic  Reformation  (621  B.C.).  Josiah  accepted  them 
as  the  command  of  God,  and  in  a  convocation  convened 
by  him  the  nation  assented  to  them.  Idolatry  was 
suppressed  with  a  ruthless  hand,  and  the  local  sanctuaries 
were  abolished.  It  might  seem,  in  view  of  the  subse- 
quent return  under  Jehoiakim  of  the  evils  removed  by 
his  father,  that  the  Reformers  had  effected  nothing.  It 
would  not  be  easy,  however,  to  over-estimate  the  im- 
portance of  their  work  for  the  later  history  of  the  religion. 
They  supplied  the  point  of  view  from  which  later  writers 
judged  the  nation's  past.  The  restriction  of  the  cultus 
to  one  sanctuary  made  possible  the  ritual  programme  of 
Ezekiel  and  the  Priestly  Code.  It  also  fostered  the 
more  spiritual  forms  of  religion,  which  at  a  later  time 
were  characteristic  of  the  synagogue.  If  sacrifice  and 
tithe  and  first-fruits  could  be  offered  only  in  Jerusalem, 
then  the  religion  in  every-day  life  assumed  a  far  less 
materialistic  character. 

In  another  way  the  acceptance  of  the  Deuteronomic 
Law  marked  the  beginning  of  a  movement  of  quite 
immeasurable  importance.  Here  the  origin  of  the 
canonisation  of  the  Hebrew  sacred  writings  is  to  be 
found.     For  the  first  time  Judah  became  what  it  has 


88      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

always  been  since — a  people  of  a  Book.  A  written  code 
was  henceforth  the  law  of  the  people's  life  and  the 
standard  by  w^hich  its  conduct  was  judged.  The  com- 
pleted Law  was  at  a  later  period  the  Canon  of  the 
Jewish  Church.  Later  still  the  .prophetic  writings  were 
admitted  to  stand  by  its  side,  though  on  a  lower  level. 
And  as  a  third  stage  other  sacred  writings  were  similarly 
regarded  as  Scripture,  and  thus  the  Canon  of  the  Old 
Testament  came  into  existence.  Certain  doubtful  books 
received  canonical  rank  later  than  the  time  of  Christ, 
but  in  the  main  the  Canon  was  fixed  before  His  time. 
For  good,  and,  it  must  be  added,  also  for  evil,  with  the 
acceptance  of  Deuteronomy  Judah  became  a  people  of 
the  Law. 


CHAPTER   VII 
JEREMIAH   AND   HIS   AGE 

Even  before  the  discovery  of  Deuteronomy  the  voice  of 
prophecy,  repressed  so  long  by  Manasseh,  had  again 
been  heard  in  Judah.  The  approaching  overthrow  of 
Nineveh  was  heralded  by  Nahum  in  splendid,  impas- 
sioned eloquence.  As  we  read  it  we  are  tempted  to 
recoil  from  its  burning  words  as  if  they  were  inspired 
by  no  nobler  feeUng  than  the  victim's  bitter  hatred  of 
the  oppressor  and  exultation  over  his  downfall.  But 
Nahum  is  not  the  mere  mouthpiece  of  a  vindictive 
patriotism.  He  speaks  rather  in  the  name  of  outraged 
humanity,  cowed  and  tormented  by  the  brutal  cruelty 
of  Assyria.  Of  Judah's  sin  he  says  nothing,  and  this 
distinguishes  him  from  the  great  pre-exilic  prophets. 
But  he  is  one  with  them  in  his  assurance  that  sin  must 
bring  its  stern,  though  it  may  be  slow,  retribution,  and 
that  God's  hottest  anger  is  poured  forth  on  tyranny 
and  cruelty. 

About  twenty  years  before  the  destruction  of  Nineveh 
vast  hordes  of  Scythians  poured  from  their  home  over 

8q 


90      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

large  parts  of  Western  Asia.  They  inflicted  terrible 
damage  wherever  they  went.  As  the  news  of  their 
approach  reached  Judah,  two  men  saw  in  them  the  in- 
struments of  Yahweh's  judgment.  Zephaniah  depicts 
the  sin  of  Judah  in  familiar  colours ;  we  read  once  more 
of  the  flagrant  idolatry,  including  star- worship,  of  child- 
sacrifice,  of  scoffing  denial  of  God's  government,  of  the 
infatuated  obstinacy  which  blinded  men  to  the  warnings 
of  the  past,  of  the  scandalous  miscarriage  of  justice,  of 
violence,  deceit,  and  oppression.  He  also  proclaims 
the  coming  of  the  Day  of  Yahweh,  though  he  describes 
it  with  much  more  elaboration  than  his  predecessors. 
The  Day  of  Wrath  is  set  forth  with  poetical  license  and 
in  a  highly  effective  way.  From  its  devastation  only  a 
remnant,  the  meek  and  righteous,  will  escape. 

The  other  was  Jeremiah,  the  greatest  and  the  most 
tragic  figure  among  the  prophets  of  the  Old  Testament. 
He  was  called  to  the  work  of  his  life  in  the  thirteenth 
year  of  Josiah's  reign  (627  B.C.),  five  years  before  the 
discovery  of  the  Deuteronomic  Law-book.  In  that  ex- 
perience he  learnt  that  he  was  a  child  of  destiny,  chosen 
even  before  his  birth  to  be  God's  spokesman.  The 
mission  was  forced  upon  him  against  his  own  inclination. 
For  he  was  timid  and  self-distrustful,  shrinking  from 
publicity,  dreading  the  hatred  that  would  be  aroused  by 
his  words,  and  dubious  of  his  ability  to  deliver  aright 


JEREMIAH    AND    HIS    AGE         91 

the  prophetic  message.  But  God  would  take  no  refusal, 
nor  suffer  His  long-cherished  plan  to  be  thwarted  by 
the  scruples  of  His  servant.  Two  visions  accompanied 
his  call.  By  the  rod  of  the  almond  tree,  which  is  the 
first  to  wake  out  of  the  sleep  of  winter,  he  learnt  that  the 
apparent  torpor  did  not  imply  that  Yahweh's  word  would 
fail  of  its  fulfilment.  It  was  a  lesson  for  the  present ; 
the  rigour  of  winter  will  soon  give  place  to  the  spring. 
But  it  was  also  designed  to  steady  him  for  disappoint- 
ments in  after  days,  when  he  had  to  see  his  predictions 
again  and  again  fail  of  their  anticipated  fulfilment. 
Against  the  shock  to  his  own  faith  and  the  incredulity  of 
the  people  he  could  brace  himself  anew  by  the  memory 
of  this  vision,  and  discipline  his  impatience  with  the 
assurance  that  in  spite  of  all  inexplicable  delay  God  was 
still  watching  over  His  word  to  perform  it.  By  the 
second  vision,  that  of  the  seething  caldron,  he  learnt  that 
judgment  was  to  come  on  Judah  from  the  north.  It 
was  natural  that  he  should  connect  this  with  the  Scythians. 
The  hordes  of  savage  horsemen  drew  nearer  and  nearer, 
a  new,  uncanny  terror,  filling  the  minds  of  men  with 
dread.  They  came  down  the  coast  of  Palestine,  and  on 
to  the  border  of  Egypt,  leaving  Judah  almost  untouched. 
Then  they  returned,  once  more  making  no  attack  on 
Judah.  The  sense  of  a  great  deliverance  may  have  pre- 
disposed the  people  to  accept  the  Reformation  which 


92      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

followed  soon  after.  It  may,  however,  have  served  also 
to  discredit  Jeremiah,  whose  predictions  of  disaster  now 
seemed  to  be  falsified.  We  do  not  know  what  attitude 
Jeremiah  adopted  towards  the  Reformation.  For  the 
king  he  had  a  warm  regard,  and  the  striking  affinity 
between  Deuteronomy  and  his  prophecies  points  to  a 
close  relation  between  Jeremiah  and  the  Law-book.  It 
has  been  supposed  by  many  that  he  took  part  in  a 
mission  to  the  cities  of  Judah  in  order  to  advocate  the 
principles  of  the  Reformation  {cf.  Jer.  xi.  i-8).  He 
may  have  hoped  that  it  would  avert  the  doom  he  had 
been  sent  to  announce.  But  the  illusion,  if  it  ever 
possessed  him,  did  not  last.  He  saw  the  real  rottenness 
of  society  and  its  religion,  and  knew  that  the  reform  was 
of  the  most  superficial  character.  This  became  clear 
when  the  untimely  death  of  Josiah  in  609  b.c.  released 
the  forces  of  reaction.  The  time  for  Assyria's  downfall 
was  now  very  near,  and  already  the  question  had  become 
urgent  to  what  power  her  empire  should  fall.  Josiah, 
unwilling  to  exchange  for  subjection  to  Egypt  the  prac- 
tical freedom  he  enjoyed  through  the  weakness  of  the 
dying  empire,  opposed  the  King  of  Egypt's  march  against 
Assyria,  and  was  slain  at  Megiddo.  This  seemed  a  direct 
negation  of  the  fundamental  principle  on  which  Deuter- 
onomy had  based  its  appeal  for  obedience.  Like  the 
earlier  prophets,   it  had  set  before  the  people  life  and 


JEREMIAH    AND    HIS    AGE         93 

death,  prosperity  as  the  reward  of  righteousness,  adversity 
as  the  penalty  of  sin.  Since  through  the  acceptance  of 
the  Law  Judah  had  become  a  righteous  people,  her  long 
sorrow  must  be  over,  the  era  of  blessedness  at  last  begun. 
The  years  which  followed  confirmed  this  hope.  Then 
suddenly  the  bright  illusion  was  shattered.  The  champion 
of  the  Reform  died  in  battle  before  he  reached  his  prime. 
His  son  Jehoahaz,  after  a  brief  reign  of  three  months, 
was  taken  to  die  a  captive  in  Egypt.  His  worthless 
brother  Jehoiakim  was  set  on  the  throne.  The  miseries 
into  which  the  unhappy  land  was  plunged  more  and 
more  deeply  by  Egypt  and  then  by  Babylon,  were  aggra- 
vated by  the  extravagance,  the  ostentation,  and  the 
tyranny  of  the  king.  It  is  little  wonder  that  a  deep  re- 
sentment was  felt  against  the  Reformers,  whose  promises 
had  been  so  belied  by  the  event.  Even  in  the  reign  of 
Josiah  it  is  probable  that  there  was  a  strong  under-current 
of  dissatisfaction  with  the  suppression  of  the  local 
sanctuaries.  Those  who  were  bound  to  them  by  ties  of 
long  familiarity,  and  whose  forefathers  had  worshipped 
at  them  through  many  generations,  must  in  many  in- 
stances have  regarded  as  impiety  their  ruthless  abolition. 
With  Jehoiakim  on  the  throne  the  smouldering  discontent 
broke  into  a  blaze.  The  old  religious  and  moral  abuses 
came  back,  and  the  work  of  Josiah  seemed  to  be  undone. 
Yet  the  Temple  had  in  no  way  lost  its  unique  pre-eminence. 


94      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

The  faith  of  Isaiah  that  Zion  could  not  be  overthrown 
had  been  firmly  wrought  into  the  popular  belief.  The 
Temple  had  become  a  national  fetish :  since  Yahweh 
dwelt  in  it,  Judah's  safety  was  assured. 

Thus  Jeremiah,  with  the  plain  facts  before  him,  saw 
that  the  Reformation  had  brought  no  radical  change. 
The  people  were  utterly  unconscious  that  their  conduct 
was  out  of  harmony  with  God's  requirements.  Jeremiah 
was  thus  confronted  with  the  same  situation  as  Amos. 
He  had  to  minister  to  a  nation  assured  of  its  own  good 
standing  with  its  God,  and  incredulous  of  any  prediction 
of  judgment.  His  contradiction  of  this  false  confidence 
was  so  sharp  and  uncompromising  that  it  nearly  cost 
him  his  life.  He  bade  the  people  not  trust  in  lying 
words  that  could  not  profit :  "  The  Temple  of  Yahweh 
are  these."  Let  them  go  to  Shiloh,  where  Yahweh 
placed  His  name  at  the  first,  and  as  they  pondered  the 
fate  that  befell  it,  remember  that  as  Yahw^eh  did  to 
Shiloh  so  also,  unless  they  amended  their  ways,  would 
He  do  to  Jerusalem.  He  did  not  expect,  indeed,  that 
they  would  listen  to  his  voice.  For  many  years  before 
the  blow  actually  fell,  it  was  a  prophetic  certainty  to  him 
that  the  extreme  penalty  would  be  inflicted.  This 
brought  him  into  collision  with  the  official  representatives 
of  religion,  both  priests  and  prophets.  Thus  he  says : 
"A  wonderful  and  horrible  thing  is  come  to  pass  in  the 


JEREMIAH    AND    HIS    AGE        95 

land;  the  prophets  prophesy  falsely  and  the  priests 
bear  rule  by  their  means,  and  my  people  love  to  have  it 
so  ;  and  what  will  ye  do  in  the  end  thereof  ?  "  (v.  30,  3 1 ). 
He  condemns  the  priests  and  prophets  for  healing 
too  lightly  the  hurt  of  the  people,  saying  Peace,  when 
there  was  no  peace.  He  charges  the  prophets  with  claim- 
ing falsely  to  speak  in  the  name  of  Yahweh.  They 
prophesy  lies  in  the  name  of  God,  the  deceits  of  their 
own  hearts.  Against  the  popular  optimism  of  these 
prophets  Jeremiah  set  the  fact  that  the  older  prophets 
had  spoken  of  war  and  calamity,  and  therefore  he  stood 
in  the  accredited  prophetic  succession  since  he  also 
predicted  disaster.  A  prophet  who  prophesied  of  peace 
could  be  accepted  as  a  true  prophet  only  when  his 
predictions  were  verified.  It  was  the  prophets  who  in 
the  reign  of  Zedekiah  incited  the  resistance  to  Babylon, 
strong  in  the  illusion  that  Zion  could  not  be  destroyed. 
And  earlier  in  his  reign,  after  the  best  of  the  nation  had 
gone  into  exile  with  the  king  at  their  head,  they  were 
not  shaken  in  their  beliefs,  but  confidently  asserted  that 
the  exiles  would  soon  return.  One  prophet  predicted 
that  the  Temple  vessels  would  be  brought  back  to 
Jerusalem  within  two  years.  Jeremiah  remained  firm  to 
his  convictions.  He  was,  in  fact,  so  certain  that  the 
capture  of  Jerusalem  could  not  be  averted  that  he  said 
even   if  the  Chaldean   army  was   so  smitten  that   only 


96      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

wounded  men  were  left  in  it,  they  should  rise  up  and 
take  the  city.  When  the  Egyptians  compelled  the 
Babylonian  army  to  raise  the  siege,  and  the  Jews  hailed 
this  as  the  final  departure  of  the  enemy  and  a  vindication 
of  their  belief  that  Zion  could  not  be  overthrown,  he 
warned  them  against  their  confidence,  and  counselled 
them  to  yield.  He  was  thus  placed  in  the  extremely 
painful  position  of  giving  advice  which,  though  it  was 
the  wholesome  truth,  seemed  unpatriotic  and  disloyal. 
He  was  not  merely  looked  upon  as  a  traitor  to  his 
country,  but  when  attempting  to  retire  from  the  city  to 
his  native  town  he  was  arrested  as  a  deserter  and  cast 
into  prison.  Subsequently,  on  advising  desertion  to  the 
Chaldeans,  he  was  thrown  into  a  dungeon  to  perish,  but 
was  rescued  by  friends. 

It  would  not  be  wise  in  the  space  at  our  disposal  to 
set  forth  the  teaching  of  Jeremiah  in  detail.  It  is  not 
in  this,  save  in  one  important  exception,  that  his  signifi- 
cance resides.  He  was  himself  a  greater  contribution  to 
the  religion  of  Israel.  His  personality  counted  for  more 
than  his  words.  The  exception  to  which  reference  has 
been  made  was  his  doctrine  of  the  New  Covenant,  and 
this  is  to  be  explained  out  of  his  experience.  Although 
Jeremiah  knew  the  evil  heart  of  his  people  too  well  to 
expect  that  they  would  obey  his  appeals  for  repentance, 
and  therefore  did  not  waver  in  his  conviction  that  judg- 


JEREMIAH    AND    HIS    AGE         97 

ment  was  inevitable,  he  did  not  think  that  punishment 
was  God's  last  word  to  Israel.  The  exiles  will  be  re- 
stored— not  Judah  only,  but  Israel — and  the  two  peoples 
will  again  become  one.  The  Old  Covenant  made  with 
the  Hebrews  at  the  Exodus  will  be  replaced  by  a  New 
Covenant  between  Israel  and  God.  He  will  put  His  law 
in  their  inward  parts  and  write  it  in  their  heart ;  they 
shall  be  His  people  and  He  will  be  their  God.  One 
will  no  longer  need  to  teach  another  the  knowledge  of 
Yahweh,  since  all  will  know  Him  from  the  least  to  the 
greatest.  He  will  forgive  their  iniquity  and  remember 
their  sin  no  more  (xxxi.  31-34). 

This  prophecy  has  been  denied  to  Jeremiah  by 
several  eminent  scholars.  The  question  is  too  complex 
to  be  discussed  in  this  place,  and  the  present  writer 
must  refer  his  readers,  for  a  statement  of  the  grounds  on 
which  he  attributes  it  to  Jeremiah,  to  what  he  has  written 
elsewhere.  It  may  at  least  be  said  that  such  a  prophecy 
is  in  harmony  alike  with  the  situation  and  with  the 
prophet's  undoubted  utterances.  It  is  not  even  certain 
that  the  Old  Covenant  had  already  been  annulled  by 
the  destruction  of  Jerusalem.  That  destruction  had 
been  a  certainty  to  Jeremiah  many  years  before  it 
happened,  and  it  is  altogether  probable  that  he  had  for 
long  reflected  on  the  future  relations  between  Yahweh 
and  Israel.     The  doctrine  of  the  New  Covenant  is  in 

G 


98      THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

perfect  harmony  with  Jeremiah's  teaching,  and,  as  will 
appear  later,  can  be  explained  from  his  own  experience. 
There  is  much  besides  in  Jeremiah  that  points  in  the 
same  direction  and  that  makes  its  individual  character 
probable.  Especially  is  this  true  of  his  language  about 
the  heart.  He  describes  it  as  deceitful  above  all  things, 
and  desperately  sick ;  he  says  of  Yahweh  that  He  tries 
the  reins  and  the  heart,  and  in  his  own  case  says,  "  Thou 
triest  mine  heart  towards  thee."  In  tacit  contrast  to 
external  circumcision  (iv.  4,  ix.  36)  he  places  the  cir- 
cumcision of  the  heart,  which  is  significant  when  we 
remember  that  the  former  was  the  mark  of  the  Old 
Covenant.  The  most  important  passage  in  this  con- 
nection is  xxiv.  7,  "  I  will  give  them  an  heart  to  know  me, 
that  I  am  Yahweh,  and  they  shall  be  my  people,  and  I 
will  be  their  God  :  for  they  shall  return  unto  m.e  with  their 
whole  heart."  This  seems  to  express  essentially  what 
the  New  Covenant  passage  expresses  more  definitely. 

Thus,  while  he  had  much  in  common  with  his  prede- 
cessors, and  especially  with  Hosea,  he  made  a  decisive 
advance  beyond  them.  He  effected  a  change  of  im- 
measurable importance  in  the  very  conception  of  religion 
itself.  The  Old  Covenant  with  Israel  had  been  a  matter 
of  external  law,  in  which  obedience  on  the  part  of  the 
nation  was  rewarded  by  certain  promised  blessings. 
The  New  Covenant,  it  is  true,  is  made  with  Israel,  not 


JEREMIAH    AND    HIS    AGE         99 

with  the  individual.  But  the  essential  feature  of  it  is 
the  law  written  on  the  heart  of  each  individual.  Re- 
ligion thus  comes  to  consist,  not  in  conformity  to  an 
external  Code,  but  in  obedience  to  the  God-given 
promptings  of  the  heart.  It  becomes  personal  and 
individual,  a  matter  between  the  soul  and  God.  Thus, 
ritual  and  ceremony  are  seen  to  be  intrinsically  unneces- 
sary. While  religion  remains  a  matter  for  the  community, 
it  must  find  expression  in  external  forms.  But  these  do 
not  guarantee  the  genuinely  religious  character  of  the 
community  that  practises  them,  since  a  national  recog- 
nition and  service  of  God  is  compatible  with  compara- 
tively widespread  religious  indifference  or  actual  impiety. 
When  a  nation  is  religious  in  the  mass,  the  piety  of 
the  units  who  compose  it  cannot  be  guaranteed.  Where 
the  nation  is  all  important,  individuals  may  be  safely 
neglected.  But  when  the  individual  gets  full  recogni- 
tion, the  ideal  is  attained  only  when  each  single  indi- 
vidual has  become  religious.  Thus  a  national  religion 
can  become  national  in  the  fullest  sense  only  through 
becoming  individualist.  This  is  what  Jeremiah  really 
predicts ;  for  while  the  Covenant  is  made  with  Israel, 
it  is  of  such  a  nature  that  the  individual  Israelite  knows 
Yahweh  for  himself,  through  the  revelation  given  in  his 
heart.  The  State  is  thus  no  longer  necessary  for  the 
preservation  of  the  religion,  so  that  its  overthrow,  and 


loo     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

the  destruction  of  Jerusalem  and  the  Temple,  did  not 
mean  to  Jeremiah,  as  to  so  many  of  his  country- 
men, the  death  of  the  religion.  By  thus  disengaging  re- 
ligion from  its  hitherto  inseparable  connection  with  the 
State,  he  provided  a  new  basis  for  religion,  and  enabled 
it,  as  personal,  to  attain  a  purity  and  worth  formerly 
unknown.  And  the  principles  he  enunciated  essentially 
transformed  religion  into  a  universal  and  not  a  local  or 
national  thing.  A  man  needs  only  to  be  a  man,  in  order 
to  have  personal  fellowship  with  God.  Tlius  Jeremiah 
transcended  the  religion  of  Israel,  and  rose  into  the 
religion  of  humanity.  And  so  Christianity  found  no 
fitter  expression  for  itself  than  that  it  was  the  religion  of 
the  New  Covenant  Jeremiah's  doctrine  was  an  anticipa- 
tion of  the  Gospel,  which  taught  the  supreme  worth  of 
the  individual,  and  the  nature  of  religion  as  a  cleansing 
of  the  heart  and  the  writing  on  it  of  an  inward  law. 

It  was  through  his  own  experience  that  he  rose  to  this 
great  conception  of  the  inwardness  of  religion.  He  was 
a  man  of  most  sensitive  and  affectionate  disposition  and 
deep  emotional  nature,  which  was  moved  to  intense 
sorrow  at  the  sins  and  sufferings  of  his  people.  But  he 
rose  above  his  weakness  when  this  was  demanded  by 
faithfulness  to  his  ofifice.  His  utterances  are  as  pointed 
and  severe  as  those  of  his  predecessors,  and  he  so  far 
overcame  his  timidity  as  again  and  again  to  risk  his  life 


JEREMIAH    AND    HIS    AGE       loi 

in  the  fulfilment  of  his  mission.  He  is  of  peculiar  im- 
portance for  the  true  appreciation  of  the  Divine  element 
in  prophecy.  No  other  prophet  depicts  so  vividly  the 
struggle  between  the  weakness  of  human  nature  and  the 
overpowering  consciousness  of  a  Divine  message.  He 
longs  for  peace,  but  is  driven  on  against  his  will,  and 
forced  by  the  irresistible  compulsion  of  Yahweh's  word 
to  utter  it,  at  whatever  cost  to  himself. 

His  vocation  brought  him  into  the  sharpest  conflict 
with  his  people,  who  received  his  warnings  of  disaster 
with  derision,  and  denounced  him  as  a  traitor  to  his 
country.  To  his  sensitive  nature  such  scorn  and  mis- 
understanding of  his  message  were  an  intolerable 
burden.  For  that  message  was  dictated  not  by  fanati- 
cal but  by  the  purest  and  most  clear-sighted  devotion 
to  his  country.  Isolated  and  misunderstood,  to  whom 
could  he  go  but  to  God?  To  Him  he  unburdens  his 
soul,  often  in  language  of  bitter  reproach.  His  work 
was  not  of  his  own  choosing;  it  was  God  who  had 
doomed  him  to  it,  and  would  grant  him  no  discharge. 
Yet  though  the  cry  is  wrung  from  him  that  God  has 
enticed  him,  and  forced  on  him  a  task  beneath  which 
he  staggers,  it  is  to  God  that  he  reveals  his  cause,  to 
God  who  is  his  strength  and  stronghold,  his  refuge  in 
the  day  of  trouble.  It  is  his  great  consolation  that  God 
knows  all  that  he  suffers  for  His  sake.     And  though  he 


I02     THE    RELIGION    OFISRAEL 

speaks  so  passionately  of  the  shame  and  scorn  which 
the  delivery  of  God's  message  brings  him,  cursing  the 
day  of  his  birth  to  a  life  of  such  sorrow,  yet  the  message 
itself  inspires  him  with  very  different  feelings.  "Thy 
words,"  he  says,  "  were  found,  and  I  did  eat  them ;  and 
thy  words  were  unto  me  a  joy,  and  the  rejoicing  of  mine 
heart"  (xv.  i6).  Thus  his  life  came  to  be  a  long  and 
intimate  intercourse  with  God.  It  touched  all  the  levels 
of  emotion,  from  the  gloomiest  depression  to  exulting 
joy.  His  whole  heart,  with  its  strength  and  weakness, 
its  love  and  its  hate,  the  dark  foreboding  and  the  soar- 
ing aspiration,  he  lays  bare  to  God.  He  would  hide  from 
the  great  Searcher  of  hearts  no  secret  winding  of  the 
maze  within  his  breast.  And  thus  he  came  to  under- 
stand the  true  nature  of  religion  as  no  one  before  him 
had  understood  it.  Hitherto,  the  individual's  relation 
to  God  was  mediated  through  the  nation.  But  Jeremiah 
came  to  understand  that  his  own  experience  gave  a 
truer  and  deeper  interpretation  of  religion.  It  was  just 
in  this  familiar  fellowship  with  God  that  the  essence  of 
religion  was  to  be  found.  Thus  he  rose  to  the  great 
thought  of  the  New  Covenant,  in  which  he  enshrined 
his  religious  ideal.  It  was  the  religion  of  the  heart,  the 
personal  knowledge  of  God  by  all,  each  for  himself,  and 
the  divinely  implanted  inward  impulse  as  the  spring  of 
all  obedience  to  God's  will. 


CHAPTER    VIII 

THE   EXILE 

The  failure  of  the  Reformation  demonstrated  that  a 
sharper  and  deeper  surgery  was  needed  to  cut  the  evil 
from  the  vitals  of  the  nation.  A  new  and  more  tragic 
ordeal  awaited  it.  For  fanatical  attachment  to  the 
Temple  and  scrupulous  performance  of  its  ritual  was 
not  enough.  Temple  and  ritual  alike  must  go  ;  captivity 
alone  could  secure  an  effective  breach  with  the  guilty 
past.  And  at  last  captivity  had  become  possible  without 
the  destruction  of  the  religion.  For  the  religion  had 
now  become  sufficiently  spiritual  to  bear  the  terrible 
shock  of  transplantation.  And  for  its  future  develop- 
ment it  was  inevitable  that  it  should  be  torn  from  its 
native  soil.  While  the  nation  remained  in  Palestine  the 
old  local  associations  were  so  strong  that  abuse  could 
not  be  altogether  cut  away.  And  though  at  first 
restriction  to  one  land  may  be  the  strength  of  a  religion, 
since  its  very  narrowness  lends  it  power,  and  its  energies 
would  be  dissipated  if  the  area  of  its  influence  were 
extended,  yet  at  length  it  changes  to  a  weakness.     The 


I04     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

religion  becomes  provincial  and  contracted,  and  univer- 
salism  has  no  chance  of  asserting  itself.  The  infatuated 
opponents  of  Jeremiah  could  point  to  Isaiah's  doctrine 
of  the  inviolability  of  Zion  and  the  overthrow  of 
Sennacherib's  army  as  proof  that  Jerusalem  was  still 
impregnable  and  that  they  were  Isaiah's  true  successors. 
But,  obstinate  in  loyalty  to  the  past,  they  had  no  discern- 
ment for  the  complete  change  of  the  conditions,  and 
could  not  read  the  signs  of  the  times. 

The  blow  was  precipitated  by  their  own  reckless 
turbulence  and  shameless  violation  of  their  solemn  oath. 
Already  in  597  the  flower  of  the  people  had  gone  into 
captivity  to  Babylon  with  Jehoiachin,  and  Zedekiah,  his 
successor,  had  sworn  to  be  loyal  to  the  Babylonians, 
who  set  him  on  the  throne.  Rebellion  brought  on 
the  final  catastrophe,  and  the  illusions  which  the  people 
had  so  fondly  entertained  were  shattered  by  the  destruc- 
tion of  Temple  and  city,  and  the  captivity  of  the  nation 
in  586.  Many  reverted  to  idolatry  {cf.  Jer.  xliv.),  for,  they 
argued,  our  disaster  proves  that  Yahweh  cannot  or  will 
not  help  us,  so  we  are  not  bound  to  Him  any  more ;  all 
things  were  well  with  us  while  we  worshipped  other  gods, 
and  to  them  we  will  once  more  give  our  allegiance. 
But,  others  argued,  punishment  is  for  our  sin  in  forsaking 
Yahweh ;  it  can  be  remitted  only  if  we  return  to  Him 
with  whole-hearted  devotion.     Whether  few  or  many, 


THEEXILE  105 

these  had  the  future  in  their  hands.  In  them  spiritual 
religion  had  grown  independent  of  time  and  place ;  they 
had  risen  above  the  local  and  provincial,  and  had  attained 
the  universal. 

The  condition  of  the  captives  in  Babylonia  seems  to 
have  been  more  prosperous  than  we  might  have  antici- 
pated. They  were  not  debarred  from  acquiring  property, 
and  apparently  they  were  allowed  certain  rights  of  self- 
government,  no  doubt  of  a  very  limited  character. 
That  they  had  achieved  considerable  worldly  success  is 
clear  from  the  fact  that  so  few  comparatively  availed 
themselves  of  the  opportunity  to  return.  Nevertheless 
the  passionate  hatred  of  Babylon  that  animates  many 
utterances  of  prophet  or  poet,  attests  strongly  how 
galHng  was  the  yoke  they  were  made  to  bear,  and  how 
hard  the  service  they  were  forced  to  render.  And  there 
is  clear  evidence  of  the  despondent  and  even  hopeless 
temper  which  had  come  upon  them.  Ezekiel's  vision  of 
the  dry  bones  is  meant  to  rebut  their  despairing  cry : 
"  Our  bones  are  dried  up,  and  our  hope  is  lost ;  we  are 
clean  cut  off."  And  the  Second  Isaiah  similarly 
rebukes  them  :  "  Why  sayest  thou,  O  Jacob,  and  speakest, 
O  Israel,  My  way  is  hid  from  the  Lord  and  my  judg- 
ment is  passed  away  from  my  God?"  Conscious  of 
their  own  innocence,  they  attributed  their  suffering  to 
the   sins   of  earlier   generations.      "The   fathers   have 


io6     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

eaten   sour  grapes  and  the  children's  teeth  are  set  on 
edge." 

But  painful  though  their  experience  was,  it  brought 
to  the  religion  of  Israel  an  immeasurable  gain.  The 
Reformation  of  Josiah  had  soon  proved  a  failure ;  the 
worship  of  the  high  places  had  been  in  many  instances 
restored.  The  old  associations  had  proved  too  fasci- 
nating ;  the  people  had  succumbed  to  them  and  defied 
the  Law.  Exile  tore  them  away,  and  snapped  the  ties 
that  bound  them  to  their  ancient  sanctuaries.  When  a 
new  generation  returned,  it  was  Zion  alone  that  com- 
manded its  allegiance.  Moreover,  their  removal  from 
Palestine  to  Babylonia  meant  that  the  Jews  now  found 
themselves  in  an  unclean  land.  In  such  a  land  the 
sacrificial  system  of  Israel  could  not  be  practised. 
Here  again  it  was  through  exile  that  the  purification  of 
the  ritual  became  possible,  since  those  who  returned 
from  exile  had  no  long  familiarity  with  older  practices 
to  hinder  them  from  accepting  the  reformed  ceremonial. 
But  the  fact  that  sacrifice  and  first-fruits  could  no 
longer  be  offered  did  not  mean  that  the  Jews  abandoned 
the  service  of  Yahweh  till  they  returned  to  His  land. 
That  service  was  forced  into  other  channels.  If  there 
were  no  sacred  places  for  them  in  Babylonia,  sacred 
times  could  be  observed  everywhere.  The  Sabbath  thus 
received  an  altogether  new  prominence.     It  became  a 


THE    EXILE  107 


distinctive  feature  of  the  religion  in  a  way  hitherto  un- 
known, that  prepared  the  way  for  the  fanatical  rigidity 
with  which  the  latter  Jews  observed  it.  And  the  more 
spiritual  forms  of  religion  could  exist  in  every  land — 
prayer  and  praise  and  the  utterance  or  exposition  of  the 
Word.  We  are  probably  thus  to  account  for  the  rise  of 
the  synagogue  worship  on  the  Sabbath  day,  which  filled 
so  large  a  place  in  and  exercised  so  profound  an  influence 
on  the  religious  life  of  post-exilic  Judaism  throughout 
the  world.  The  voice  of  prophecy  was  not  wholly  dumb. 
But  the  prophets  as  a  class  had  been  discredited  by  the 
destruction  of  Jerusalem,  which  had  branded  them  as 
liars  and  proved  their  easy  optimism  a  shallow  delusion. 
Prophets  of  Ezekiel's  type  were  few.  It  was  natural 
that,  in  the  Sabbath  gatherings,  the  Jews  should  read 
their  own  sacred  writings,  the  prophets,  historians,  and 
Codes  of  Law  so  far  as  they  had  been  compiled.  Thus 
the  ministry  of  the  Word  came  to  hold  a  very  important 
place  in  meetings  for  worship.  The  transition  from  a 
ceremonial  to  a  purely  spiritual  type  of  religion  was 
made  easier  by  the  fact  that  the  captivity  was  not 
accomplished  at  one  stroke.  Eleven  years  elapsed 
between  the  captivity  of  Jehoiachin  and  the  destruction 
of  Jerusalem.  Those  who  went  into  exile  first  almost 
all  expected  their  absence  from  Jerusalem  to  be  but 
temporary  :  encouraged  by  their  prophets,  they  refused  to 


To8     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

credit  the  predictions  of  Jeremiah  and  Ezekiel.  This 
had  one  advantage,  that  they  were  gradually  trained 
during  those  eleven  years  in  the  practice  of  a  non-local- 
ised, non-ceremonial  religion,  so  that  when  the  final 
blow  fell,  the  situation  that  arose  had  lost  its  paralysing 
novelty.  Had  there  not  been  this  interval,  in  which 
they  unconsciously  became  accustomed  to  a  new  order 
of  things,  they  might  have  found  it  difficult  to  retain 
their  faith  in  their  ancestral  religion.  But  since  they 
found  it  possible  to  do  so,  it  was  necessary  to  take  pre- 
cautions to  secure  their  racial  identity  from  being 
impaired.  They  no  longer  existed  as  a  nation ;  it  was 
all  the  more  essential  that  they  should  remain  Jews,  and 
not  suffer  the  fate  of  others,  who  were  quickly  merged  in 
the  population  among  which  they  were  planted.  Hence 
came  the  striking  development  of  those  features  which 
marked  the  Jew  off  from  other  peoples,  such  as  the 
Sabbath,  circumcision,  and  the  laws  of  uncleanness. 
Another  result  of  the  exile  was  that  the  attention  of  the 
Jews  was  concentrated  much  more  on  their  religious 
customs  and  literature.  The  politics  that  had  so  long 
absorbed  their  attention  now  lost  all  their  meaning,  and 
patriotism  was  diverted  in  another  direction.  The 
priests  collected  and  committed  to  writing  statements  as 
to  the  ritual  usages  to  which  they  had  been  accustomed, 
while   others    brought   together   and    edited    historical 


THE    EXILE  109 

narratives  or  the  oracles  of  older  prophets.  The 
prophetic  voice  was  not  completely  silent,  though  from 
the  time  of  Ezekiel  till  shortly  before  the  destruction  of 
Babylon  we  know  of  very  little  if  any  activity  of  the 
prophets.  All  the  more  zeal  was  shown  in  preserving 
and  meditating  on  the  written  Word. 


CHAPTER   IX 

EZEKIEL 

EzEKiEL  was  carried  into  captivity  with  Jehoiachin  in 
597,  and  received  his  call  to  the  prophetic  ministry  in 
592.  Several  years  had  yet  to  run  before  Jerusalem  was 
destroyed,  but  he  predicted  her  fate  with  unfaltering 
conviction.  In  this  he  followed  Jeremiah,  but  the  work 
of  the  elder  prophet  was  all  but  done  when  the  blow 
actually  fell.  It  was  therefore  the  lot  of  Ezekiel  to 
provide  for  the  new  conditions,  and  secure  the  continued 
existence  of  the  religion  of  Israel  when  the  State  with 
which  it  had  been  indissolubly  connected  was  no  more. 
Standing  at  the  crisis  of  his  nation's  fortunes,  he  was 
forced  to  read  the  lesson  of  the  past  and  forecast  the 
future  as  well  as  fulfil  a  duty  to  the  present.  And  his 
attitude  in  each  respect  is  controlled  by  his  conception 
of  God.  His  whole  teaching  is  dominated  by  his  sense 
of  the  holiness  and  glory  of  God,  and  it  is  from  this  stand- 
point that  he  interprets  history  and  predicts  the  future. 

He  represents  Yahweh  as  a  self-regarding  Deity,  seek- 
ing His  own  glory  in  all  His  acts,  rigorously  just  in  all 


EZEKIEL  III 


His  ways.  It  is  in  the  light  of  this  doctrine  that  he 
draws  his  great  indictment  against  Israel.  It  was  this 
which  impelled  him  to  give  a  reasoned  justification  of 
God's  government,  that  His  glory  might  be  seen  in  all 
its  untarnished  brightness.  His  holy  Name  had  been 
compromised  before  the  world  by  three  things.  First, 
the  sin  of  Israel  cast  its  polluting  shadow  on  the  God 
who  dwelt  in  her  midst.  Yahweh  vindicated  His  honour 
by  the  punishment  of  exile.  Secondly,  the  exile  seemed 
to  the  world  to  involve  Yahweh  in  the  dishonour  of  His 
people,  and  prove  that  He  could  not  save  them.  To 
vindicate  Himself  from  this  the  restoration  of  Israel  was 
necessary.  Thirdly,  the  exultation  of  the  nations  at  the 
overthrow  of  Jerusalem  seemed  to  strike  at  the  glory  of 
the  God  who  had  dwelt  there.  To  remove  the  stain 
from  His  honour  God  would  punish  the  nations  that 
had  thus  insulted  His  people  and  city. 

At  the  very  outset  of  his  ministry  he  was  warned  again 
and  again  that  the  Israelites  were  a  rebellious  house. 
But  this  had  been  their  character  from  the  origin  of  the 
nation.  While  other  prophets  spoke  of  the  early  right- 
eousness of  Israel  or  of  Jerusalem,  Ezekiel  emphatically 
denied  it.  Even  before  they  were  rescued  from  Egypt 
they  were  idolatrous,  and  after  they  had,  in  spite  of  this, 
been  delivered,  they  were  guilty  of  repeated  rebellion  in 
the  wilderness.     Still  they  were  spared  and  brought  into 


112     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL. 

the  fruitful  land  of  Canaan;  but  no  sooner  had   they 
entered  it,  than  they  adopted  all  the  heathen  sanctuaries 
and  idolatrous  customs  of  the  Canaanites.     Their  history 
had  been  one  unbroken  series  of  acts  of  unfaithfulness. 
Jerusalem,  found  by  Yahweh  deserted  and  uncared  for, 
moved  Him  to  pity  by  her  forlorn  condition.     He  clothed 
her  magnificently,  put  His  majesty  upon  her,  and  her 
renown    became    great   among    the   nations.     But   she 
rewarded  Him  by  forsaking  Him  for  Egypt,  Assyria,  and 
Chaldea,  perverting  to  base  uses  the  gifts  He  had  lavished 
upon  her.     She  had  been  far  worse   than  Sodom  and 
Samaria.     Her  father  was  an  Amorite  and  her  mother  a 
Hittite,  and  of  her  the  proverb  was  true,  "  Like  mother, 
like  daughter,"  for  she  had  been  a  true  daughter  of  the 
Hittite.     Idolatry  and  child-sacrifice,  profanation  of  the 
Temple  and  defilement  of  the  holy  things,  perversion  of 
justice,  oppression,  murder  and  impurity,  are  among  the 
dark  sins  which  characterise  the  people.     They  are  worse 
than  the  heathen,  stubborn  in  their  sin  and  unashamed. 
And  Yahweh  has  forborne  to  smite,  lest  His  own  honour 
should  be  dimmed  in  the  world's  sight  by  the  destruction 
of  His  people.     But  now  His  wrath,  long  pent  up,  will 
break  loose,  and  He  will  neither  spare  nor  pity.     Thus 
His  glory  will  be  satisfied  and  He  w411  be  comforted, 
tormented  no  longer   by  the  distraction  between   His 
anger  with  Israel  and  His  pity  for  His  holy  Name. 


EZEKIEL  113 


But  just  as  zeal  for  His  own  glory  leads  Yahweh  to 
punish  the  nation  which  has  intolerably  darkened  His 
fair  fame,  so  a  similar  concern  will  lead  Him  to  restore 
it  from  exile,  lest  He  lie  under  the  imputation  of  weak- 
ness. He  meets  the  despair  of  the  people  with  the 
vision  of  the  valley  of  dry  bones.  Just  as  these  bones, 
from  which  all  the  juice  of  life  has  been  drained,  yet 
reunite  into  skeletons  and  are  clothed  with  flesh,  and 
then  as  the  wind  breathes  on  them  return  to  life,  so 
Yahweh  will  put  His  life-giving  spirit  into  the  dead 
nation,  and  it  shall  live  again  and  be  restored  to  its  own 
land.  Judah  and  Ephraim  will  be  reunited  and  dwell 
in  the  land  for  ever.  Thus  the  nations  will  understand 
that  Israel's  exile  was  due  to  her  own  sin,  not  to  Yahweh's 
inability  to  deliver  her.  Then  when  Israel  is  dwelling 
in  her  land  in  peace  and  prosperity,  with  no  visible 
defence,  Yahweh  will  wipe  out  the  insults  which  the 
heathen  have  heaped  upon  Him  and  His  people,  by 
enticing  Gog  to  attack  the  defenceless  people.  He 
comes  with  an  innumerable  horde,  but  God  utterly 
destroys  them  with  pestilence,  fire,  and  tempest. 

Israel's  restoration  and  safety  rest  on  her  new  relation 
to  God.  Penitence  on  her  part  is  met  by  grace  and 
forgiveness  on  His  own.  In  almost  New  Testament 
language  the  prophet  describes  how  Yahweh  will  cleanse 
His  people  from  all  their  filthiness  and  idols.     He  will 


114     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

give  them  a  new  heart  and  implant  a  new  spirit  within 
them,  taking  away  the  stony  heart  and  giving  them  a 
heart  of  flesh.  And  for  this  regenerate  community  in 
the  New  Jerusalem  the  prophet  sketches  an  elaborate 
organisation.  Yet  even  this  is  for  God's  sake  rather 
than  Israel's.  He  dwells  in  the  midst  of  His  people,  and 
the  most  rigorous  precautions  are  taken  to  guard  His 
holiness  from  all  that  would  profane  it.  He  is  most 
elaborately  insulated  from  contact  with  the  heathen 
world  j  while  the  priests  and  Levites  stand  between  Him 
and  the  Jewish  laity. 

In  yet  another  way  Ezekiel's  doctrine  of  God  led  to 
important  results.  The  people  complained  that  they 
suffered  for  the  sins  of  their  fathers,  and  that  the  ways  of 
Yahweh  were  therefore  unfair.  "  The  fathers  have  eaten 
sour  grapes  and  the  children's  teeth  are  set  on  edge." 
This  reflection  on  God's  equity  was  a  challenge  which 
Ezekiel  could  not  ignore.  He  emphatically  denied  that 
guilt  or  merit  could  be  transferred  from  one  to  another. 
His  doctrine  as  he  states  and  restates  it  is  as  follows. 
In  the  first  place,  retribution  and  reward  are  given  strictly 
to  the  individual  himself,  and  not  in  the  least  degree  to 
another.  "  The  soul  that  sinneth,  it  shall  die  :  the  son 
shall  not  bear  the  iniquity  of  the  father,  neither  shall 
the  father  bear  the  iniquity  of  the  son  ;  the  righteous- 
ness of  the  righteous  shall  be  upon  him,  and  the  wicked- 


EZEKIEL  115 


ness  of  the  wicked  shall  be  upon  him "  (xviii.  20). 
Secondly,  at  any  moment  the  wicked  may  turn  from  his 
wickedness  or  the  righteous  fall  away  from  his  righteous- 
ness. The  human  will  is  free.  Thirdly,  a  man's  fate  is 
determined  not  by  his  past  but  by  his  state  at  the 
moment  in  which  judgment  finds  him.  If  he  has  lived 
in  wickedness,  but  has  turned  from  his  sin,  he  shall  live, 
and  his  evil-doing  shall  not  be  remembered  against  him. 
On  the  other  hand,  if  a  righteous  man  fall  into  sin,  and 
judgment  overtakes  him  in  it,  none  of  his  former  good 
deeds  shall  be  remembered  in  his  favour,  but  he  shall 
die  in  his  iniquity.  This  is  due  to  an  intensification  of 
his  individualism.  Not  only  does  he  separate  each 
individual  sharply  from  all  others,  and  insist  on  his 
suffering  for  his  own  sin  or  preservation  by  his  own 
righteousness,  he  sharply  distinguishes  the  moments 
of  a  man's  life.  He  is  judged  not  by  his  past,  which  is 
left  wholly  out  of  account,  but  by  his  state  at  the 
moment  when  the  judgment  comes.  This  judgment  is 
not  to  be  identified  with  death.  On  the  contrary,  it  is 
the  judgment  which  is  coming  on  the  nation,  in  which 
the  wicked  will  be  slain,  whereas  the  righteous  will 
survive  to  share  in  the  time  of  blessedness.  Life  and 
death  are  of  course  conceived  as  physical. 

The  denial  of  solidarity  and  assertion  of  individual 
responsibility  carried  with  it  a  new  duty  for  the  prophet. 


ii6     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

He  is  not  simply,  like  his  predecessors,  God's  spokesman 
to  the  nation.  He  has  a  message  to  the  individual, 
warning  the  righteous  to  remain  in  his  righteousness  lest 
he  be  cut  off  in  his  sin,  and  warning  the  wicked  to  the 
end  that  he  may  turn  and  live.  Thus  the  prophet  be- 
comes a  pastor,  with  the  salvation  of  individual  souls 
as  his  special  concern ;  and  on  his  faithful  fulfilment  of 
his  task  hangs  the  destiny  of  those  entrusted  to  his  care. 
Thus  with  the  break-up  of  the  Jewish  State,  the  individual, 
who  had  been  previously  merged  in  the  mass,  receives  a 
recognition  of  his  independent  worth.  Jeremiah  finds 
the  essence  of  religion  in  personal  fellowship  with  God, 
while  Ezekiel  lays  the  stress  rather  on  individual  respon- 
sibihty. 

But  while  Jeremiah's  doctrine  was  too  high  for  any 
but  a  very  few,  and  therefore  found  a  home  chiefly 
among  Psalmists  before  it  was  realised  in  Christianity, 
Ezekiel  powerfully  influenced  the  immediate  future,  so 
mnch  so  that  he  may  be  called  the  father  of  Judaism. 
Its  legalism,  ceremonialism,  and  rigid  dogmatism  are  all 
in  him.  So,  too,  is  the  conception  of  God's  remoteness, 
which  led  in  later  Judaism  to  an  elaborate  doctrine  of 
angelic  intermediaries  between  God  and  the  world.  His 
sketch  of  the  ritual  service  in  the  reformed  and  re- 
stored community  constituted  the  bridge  between 
Deuteronomy  and  the   Priestly  Code.     He    combined 


EZEKIEL  117 


with  his  individualism  a  recognition  of  the  fact  that 
religion  is  also  a  matter  for  the  community.  Thus  the 
religion  of  Israel  was  organised  and  preserved  from 
destruction ;  and  to  Ezekiel  more  than  to  any  man 
was  due  the  creation  of  the  community  which  sheltered 
spiritual  religion  till  it  was  strong  enough  to  stand  alone, 
and  enabled  it  to  survive  the  disintegrating  influence  of 
Greek  thought  and  life. 


CHAPTER   X 

THE   SECOND    ISAIAH 

The  Book  of  Habakkuk  presents  a  very  difficult  critical 
problem.  Usually  it  is  supposed  to  belong  for  the  most 
part  to  the  reign  of  Jehoiakim.  The  present  writer, 
however,  prefers  to  regard  the  first  two  chapters  (with 
the  exception  of  i.  5-11)  as  written  in  the  exile.  The 
author's  theme  is  the  difficulty  of  reconciling  the  suffer- 
ing of  righteous  Israel  and  the  triumph  of  the  idolatrous 
oppressor  with  the  righteousness  of  God.  That  a  nation 
so  cruel  and  haughty,  so  brutal  and  selfish,  should  be 
permitted  to  glut  its  appetite  for  blood  and  treasure  filled 
him  with  amazement  and  indignation;  and  all  the 
more  when  its  victim  was  the  righteous  people  of  God. 
He  gains  no  explanation  of  the  moral  mystery.  But  as 
he  waits  on  his  prophetic  watch-tower  for  the  Divine 
answer,  he  receives  the  assurance  that  sure  though  slov/- 
footed  retribution  will  overtake  the  oppressor,  while 
righteous  Judah  will  live  through  its  loyal  adhesion  to 
its  God.     It  was  a  moral  necessity,  if  He  was  righteous 

who  sat  on  the  throne  of  the  universe,  that  ruin  should 
118 


THE    SECOND    ISAIAH  119 

await  the  impious  and  treacherous  tyrant.  His  pride 
was  the  precursor  of  his  fall ;  his  methods  of  conquest 
bore  within  them  the  seeds  of  his  destruction.  There- 
fore let  the  afflicted  people  wait  patiently,  for  in  their 
faith  and  patience  they  should  win  their  lives.  Faith 
and  patience  might  alike  be  sorely  strained  by  delay, 
but  they  must  rise  victorious  over  the  temptation  to 
despair.  Thus  the  prophet  receives  no  answer  to  his 
difficulty.  But  he  attains  peace,  since  he  rises  into  the 
atmosphere  of  unclouded  trust,  and  leaves  his  unravelled 
perplexities  in  the  hands  of  a  righteous  God. 

When  Habakkuk  proclaimed  his  confidence  in  the 
overthrow  of  the  Babylonian  empire,  it  was  not  because, 
as  he  scanned  the  heavens  from  his  watch-tower, 
he  descried  any  cloud  on  the  political  horizon  that 
heralded  the  coming  storm.  But  ere  long  the  exiles 
heard  the  tidings  of  the  conquests  achieved  by  Cyrus. 
The  news  brought  them  no  comfort  in  their  despondency, 
for  how  could  they  expect  that  he  would  destroy  the 
mighty  dominion  that  had  crushed  all  hope  out  of  their 
breast  ?  But  some  saw  in  him  the  predestined  deliverer, 
who  would  fulfil  the  earlier  prophecies  of  retribution  on 
the  oppressor  and  redemption  of  the  oppressed.  The 
chief  of  these  was  the  great  prophet,  who  is  usually  known 
as  the  Second  Isaiah.  It  is  probable  that  we  should 
attribute  to  him  Isa.  xl.-lv.,  including  the  four  poems 


I20     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

commonly  described  as  the  Servant  of  Yahweh  passages 
(Isa.  xlii.  1-4,  xlix.  1-6,  1.  4-9,  Hi.  13-liii.  12),  though 
many  scholars  prefer  to  regard  these  poems  as  the  work 
of  another  author. 

It  was  his  design  to  comfort  and  uplift  his  people,  who 
despaired  of  the  future  and  were  dismayed  by  the  might 
of  Babylon  and  the  magnificence  of  its  gods.  He  does 
so  by  his  lofty  declarations  of  Yahweh's  omnipotence 
and  His  government  in  nature  and  history,  by  his 
scornful  exposure  of  the  senselessness  of  idolatry,  by  the 
meaning  he  gives  to  Israel's  suffering,  and  his  description 
of  the  part  she  is  to  play  in  God's  great  design.  No 
prophet  has  emphasised  so  strongly  the  greatness  of 
Yahweh.  He  is  the  everlasting  God,  the  First  and  the 
Last,  and  the  Incomparable.  He  is  the  strong  Creator 
who  called  into  being  the  starry  heavens  and  the  remotest 
regions  of  earth,  and  rules  them  with  unchallenged  sway. 
He  is  unsearchable  in  wisdom ;  no  one  has  been  His 
counsellor  and  instructor.  The  truth,  thus  vividly  set 
forth,  that  Yahweh  is  the  only  true  God,  and  that  the 
heathen  gods  are  nothing,  finds  its  proof  in  history.  He 
is  the  ruler  of  the  life  of  nature,  who  has  ordained  the 
course  of  history  and  shapes  all  its  forces  to  His  own 
ends.  And  this  claim  is  proved  by  His  power  to 
predict  the  future,  exemplified  in  the  prediction  of 
the  rise  of  Cyrus,  and  in  the  new  predictions  which  will 


THE    SECOND    ISAIAH  121 

soon  be  verified  by  their  fulfilment.  For  only  He  who 
rules  the  world  can  know  what  the  world's  future  is 
to  be.  And  in  the  prophetic  word  which  He  inspires, 
there  works  an  inherent  energy,  so  that  it  cannot  return 
to  Him  void,  but  must  accomplish  His  will  and  prosper 
in  the  task  on  which  He  sends  it.  So  all  the  might 
of  Babylon  and  the  splendour  of  its  gods  dwindle  to 
nothing  compared  with  the  strength  and  glory  of  Yahweh, 
who  counts  the  nations  as  the  small  dust  of  the  balance, 
as  less  than  nothing  and  vanity. 

The  Yahweh  of  this  prophet  is  a  sweeter  and  more 
gracious  Deity  than  the  self-centred  Yahweh  of  Ezekiel. 
He  is  not,  indeed,  without  stern  elements  in  His  character. 
But  what  chiefly  engages  the  prophet's  thought  is  the 
gentleness  and  graciousness  of  Yahweh.  He  has,  it  is 
true,  poured  on  Israel  the  fury  of  His  anger.  Indeed 
Israel  has  received  at  His  hands  double  punishment  for 
all  her  sin.  But  now  He  utters  the  word  of  comfort  and 
promises  speedy  deliverance.  He  will  Himself  bring 
His  people  back  from  exile  like  a  good  shepherd,  gently 
leading  the  weak  and  carrying  the  lambs  in  His  bosom. 
Zion  rises  again  from  her  humiliation  and  is  clothed  anew 
with  beauty.  He  will  save  His  people  with  an  everlast- 
ing salvation,  and  have  mercy  on  them  with  everlasting 
kindness.  No  weapon  formed  against  them  shall 
prosper,  and  those  who  have  aflhcted  Israel  shall  drink 


122     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

the  cup  of  Yahweh's  fury,  while  kings  and  queens  shall 
lick  the  dust  of  her  feet. 

The  deepest  elemerxt  in  the  prophet's  message  is  the 
interpretation  of  Israel's  suffering  and  the  conception  of 
Israel's  mission.  He  does  not,  it  is  true,  deny  that  the 
nation's  sin  is  partly  responsible  for  the  death  which  has 
overtaken  it.  But  he  feels  that  the  penalty  has  been  far 
heavier  than  strict  justice  demanded.  It  is  accordingly 
a  problem  for  him  how  he  shall  explain  the  excess  of 
punishment  which  Israel  has  received  beyond  its  deserts. 
He  solves  the  problem  by  his  presentation  of  Israel  as 
the  Servant  of  Yahweh.  God  has  chosen  Israel  in  the 
distant  past  for  this  high  position.  To  the  other  nations 
the  elect  people  seemed  but  puny  and  contemptible, 
as  they  scornfully  watched  its  lowly  origin  and  its 
unattractive  progress  towards  maturity.  And  when  stripe 
after  stripe  fell  upon  it,  and  it  was  made  hideous  by 
disease,  so  that  they  shrank  in  disgust  from  it  as  from  a 
leper,  they  attributed  to  its  sin  the  long  calamities  which 
culminated  in  its  death.  But  their  judgment  has  gone 
wholly  astray.  The  death  of  the  nation  is  to  be 
followed  by  its  resurrection;  Israel  is  to  return  from 
exile  and  be  exalted  in  glory.  Struck  with  amazement 
at  so  dramatic  a  change  in  its  fortunes,  the  heathen  will 
penitently  confess  that  they  have  wronged  the  Servant 
by  their  misjudgment     His  exaltation  has  proved  that 


THE    SECOND    ISAIAH  123 

he  was  not  marked  out  by  his  exceptional  suffering 
as  an  exceptional  sinner.  What  meaning  can  they  give 
to  that  suffering  which  seemed  to  speak  so  loudly  of  his 
sin  ?  As  they  meditate  on  it,  the  contrast  between  what 
might  have  been  expected  and  what  has  actually 
happened  brings  them  to  see  that  Israel,  which  was 
relatively  innocent,  has  suffered,  while  they,  who  had 
forsaken  the  true  God  for  idols,  had  escaped.  What  can 
be  the  meaning  of  this,  save  that  Israel  has  borne 
the  penalty  which  should  have  been  inflicted  on  the 
heathen  ?  The  Servant  of  Yahweh  is  thus  the  vicarious 
sufferer  for  the  sin  of  the  nations.  But  this  does  not 
exhaust  his  significance.  It  is  also  his  function  to 
be  Yahweh's  missionary  to  the  Gentiles,  proclaiming  to 
them  the  knowledge  of  the  true  God.  Trained  by  God's 
own  tuition,  disciplined  by  pain  and  martyrdom  loyally 
endured  in  faithfulness  to  his  mission,  he  will  perform 
his  great  task  with  the  most  tender  respect  for  the 
faintest  gleam  of  light  he  may  find  in  those  to  whom  he 
ministers.  He  will  not  speak  to  an  audience  wholly 
unprepared.  The  far  lands  are  already  waiting  for  his 
instruction. 

No  nation  could  adequately  fulfil  so  stupendous  a  task 
as  that  which  the  prophet  assigned  to  Israel.  But 
the  author  truly  divined  the  essential  meaning  of  Israel 
in  the  world's  history,  disengaging  it  from  the  accidents 


124     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

which  were  so  inharmonious  with  it.  It  was  only  in 
a  single  personality  that  the  essential  meaning  could  win 
a  clear  and  uncontaminated  expression.  And  when 
He  came  who  gathered  into  Himself  all  the  significance 
of  that  people  from  which  He  sprang,  He  came  as  the 
Supreme  Revealer  of  God  to  man,  and  bore  upon  Him 
the  burden  of  the  world's  sin. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE   BIRTH   OF   JUDAISM 

In  536  Cyrus,  into  whose  hands  the  Babylonian  empire 
had  fallen,  fulfilled  the  predictions  of  the  Second  Isaiah 
and  gave  the  Jews  permission  to  return  to  Palestine. 
But  the  response  to  this  permission  fell  far  short  of 
the  prophet's  glowing  forecast.  A  fresh  generation  had 
sprung  up,  which  knew  Jerusalem  only  by  name,  and 
the  power  with  which  it  appealed  to  their  imagination, 
however  great  it  may  have  been,  was  too  faint  to  spur 
them  to  the  worldly  sacrifice  involved  in  leaving  Babylon, 
or  snap  the  ties  which  bound  them  to  the  land  of  their 
birth.  Yet  those  who  remained  behind  exerted  and 
were  destined  to  exert  a  powerful  influence  on  the 
Judaism  of  the  future,  for  it  was  in  Babylonia  that  the 
final  codification  of  the  Law  seems  to  have  taken  place. 
On  its  return  the  feeble  band  that  had  come  from 
Babylon  found  itself  thwarted  by  the  hostility  of  "  the 
people  of  the  land,"  whose  offer  to  join  in  the  rebuilding 
of  the  Temple  it  had  repulsed.  But  the  delay  in  building 
was  not  simply  caused  by  external  foes.    The  enthusiasm 


126     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

which  had  brought  them  from  Babylon  was  quickly 
chilled  by  the  disenchanting  realities  of  drought  and 
wretched  harvests  and  failure  to  prosper  in  anything 
to  which  they  set  their  hand.  They  excused  themselves 
from  rebuilding  the  Temple  on  the  ground  that  the 
effort  was  premature,  and  that  all  their  energy  was 
needed  to  make  their  own  position  secure.  At  last 
they  were  roused  from  their  apathy  by  the  reproach 
and  appeal  of  two  prophets,  Haggai  and  Zechariah. 
The  former  prophet  (520  B.C.)  meets  the  excuse  of  the 
people  with  the  reply  that  it  is  their  neglect  to  build 
the  Temple  which  has  brought  about  their  miserable 
condition.  They  dwell  in  panelled  houses,  while 
Yahweh's  house  lies  waste.  When  they  began  to  build, 
and  were  despondent  because  the  new  Temple  seemed 
mean  in  comparison  with  the  old,  he  encouraged  them 
by  the  assurance  that  Yahweh  was  with  them  and  would 
soon  shake  the  heavens  and  the  earth  and  all  nations, 
and  then  the  desirable  things  of  all  nations  would  come, 
and  Yahweh  would  fill  the  house  with  His  glory.  For 
the  silver  and  the  gold  are  His,  and  the  latter  glory  of 
the  Temple  shall  be  greater  than  the  former.  Then,  after 
this  convulsion  of  kingdoms,  Yahweh  will  take  His 
servant  Zerubbabel  and  make  him  as  a  signet,  for  He 
has  chosen  him.  It  is  quite  clear  from  these  allusions 
that  the  prophet  knew  of  or  expected  great  political 


THE    BIRTH    OF    JUDAISM      127 

disturbances,  as  a  consequence  of  which  he  anticipated 
a  glorious  future  for  Zerubbabel.  These  disturbances 
had,  in  fact,  begun  the  year  before,  when  almost  the 
whole  of  the  Persian  empire,  though  not  Syria  or  Asia 
Minor,  was  in  revolt.  To  Haggai  this  is  the  beginning 
of  the  end.  The  Messianic  kingdom  will  soon  come 
in,  and  apparently  Zerubbabel  is  thought  of  as  the 
Messiah.  The  revolts  were,  however,  suppressed,  and 
the  subsequent  history  of  Zerubbabel  is  unknown  to 
us.  It  has  been  conjectured  that  he  was  put  to  death 
by  the  Persians  for  participation  in  a  Messianic  revolt, 
and  some  have  seen  in  him  the  martyred  Servant  of 
Yahweh  (Isa.  Hi.  13-liii.  12). 

Zechariah,  who  is  the  author  of  the  first  eight  chapters 
in  the  book  which  bears  his  name,  shared  the  labours 
and  expectations  of  Haggai.  He  represents  a  further 
stage  in  the  movement  of  prophecy  towards  apocalyptic 
which  had  been  initiated  by  Zephaniah  and  Ezekiel. 
His  message  is  largely  conveyed  in  visions,  the  symbolism 
of  which  is  often  obscure ;  angels  receive  a  new  promi- 
nence as  intermediaries  between  God  and  the  prophet, 
a  witness  to  the  growing  sense  of  the  transcendence  of 
God;  deliverance  is  expected  to  come  not  through  a 
normal  development  of  the  existing  situation,  but 
through  the  sudden  and  decisive  intervention  of  God. 
In  his  first  vision  he  learns  that  the  earth  is  at  rest. 


128     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

The  angel  of  Yahweh  appeals  to  God  for  Jerusalem. 
The  connection  between  the  report  that  all  is  at  rest 
and  the  angel's  appeal  lies  in  the  thought  that  for  the 
Messianic  time  to  come  in,  a  great  political  upheaval 
is  necessary.  When  the  angel  learns  that  all  is 
peaceful,  he  urges  his  remonstrance  against  God's 
delay.  Zechariah's  message  is  therefore  similar  to  that 
of  Haggai.  The  stillness  of  the  earth  is  but  the  calm 
before  the  storm ;  the  tempest  will  soon  burst,  Yahweh 
will  shake  heaven  and  earth,  and  in  the  crash  of  empires 
Zion  will  come  to  its  own.  The  second  vision  depicts 
the  destruction  of  the  hostile  heathen  world.  The 
third  vision  answers  the  question,  When  will  the  walls 
of  Jerusalem  be  built?  with  the  assurance  that  the 
population  will  expand  beyond  the  limits  of  a  closely 
built  town  into  a  cluster  of  villages,  and  Jerusalem  will 
need  no  walls,  for  Yahweh  will  be  its  protection.  In 
the  fourth  vision,  which  is  very  obscure,  the  prophet 
addresses  himself  to  the  misgiving  created  by  their 
miseries  in  the  mind  of  the  people,  that  they  were  the 
victims  of  God's  settled  hostility.  The  Satan,  an  angel 
who  contests  before  God  men's  claim  to  righteousness, 
accuses  Joshua  the  high-priest,  in  order  to  bring  more 
punishment  on  the  people.  Yahweh  rebukes  him  on 
the  ground  that  He  has  Himself  interposed  to  snatch 
Jerusalem    from   punishment,    plucking   it   as  a   brand 


THE    BIRTH    OF    JUDAISM       129 

from  the  burning,  therefore  the  appeal  for  still  further 
punishment  is  contrary  to  His  will.  The  sin  of  Joshua 
is  then  removed,  he  is  clad  in  robes  of  righteousness, 
and  access  to  Yahweh's  presence  is  graciously  promised 
to  him.  The  fifth  vision  seems  to  mean  that  the  revela- 
tion of  Himself  which  Yahweh  makes  in  the  Temple 
is  made  possible  through  Zerubbabel  and  Joshua,  the 
prince  and  the  high-priest,  since  it  is  they  who  rebuild 
and  maintain  the  sanctuary.  Difficulties  shall  disappear 
before  Zerubbabel;  as  he  has  begun  so  he  shall  com- 
plete the  Temple.  The  sixth  vision  represents  the  curse 
upon  sin  under  the  figure  of  a  flying  roll,  which  goes 
over  the  land  and  entering  the  houses  of  sinners  con- 
sumes them.  The  seventh  vision  describes  the  placing 
of  a  woman  in  an  ephah,  which  is  fastened  down  and 
carried  to  the  land  of  Shinar.  This  woman  is  Wicked- 
ness; by  her  removal  the  land  is  freed  from  sin  and 
its  allurements.  The  eighth  vision  apparently  indicates 
that  Yahweh  is  about  to  execute  judgment  upon  the 
nations,  and  thus  prepare  the  way  for  the  Messianic 
time.  Following  this  we  have  a  passage,  which  appears 
to  have  been  tampered  with,  but  in  its  original  form 
represented  Zerubbabel  as  crowned  while  Joshua  was 
set  at  his  side.  Zerubbabel  is  thus  again  described  as 
the  Messianic  king,  and  the  counsel  of  peace  between 
him  and  Joshua  means  that  king  and  priest  are  to  act 


I30     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

harmoniously  together.  On  the  rest  of  the  prophecy 
it  is  not  necessary  to  linger. 

When  the  veil  is  again  lifted  we  find  that  matters  had 
not  improved.  The  date  of  the  book  which  bears  the 
title  Malachi  is  uncertain  ;  we  may  perhaps  place  it  shortly 
before  Ezra's  arrival  in  Jerusalem  in  458.  The  sixty  years 
that  separate  the  author  from  Haggai  and  Zechariah  are 
a  blank  to  us.  But  the  intervening  period  had  apparently 
been  one  of  growing  disillusion  and  cooling  zeal.  The 
sins  against  which  the  older  prophets  had  prophesied 
still  stain  the  nation's  life — sorcery,  adultery,  perjury,  op- 
pression of  the  poor  and  defenceless.  The  priests  show 
their  contempt  for  Yahweh  by  the  paltriness  of  their  offer- 
ings ;  their  duties  have  become  a  tiresome  routine.  The 
people  rob  God  in  the  matter  of  tithes  and  offerings. 
Divorce,  and  marriage  with  heathen  women,  were  common. 
The  pious  had  grown  discouraged,  since  the  wicked 
seemed  to  prosper  and  the  righteous  found  it  vain  to 
serve  God. 

The  prophet  rebukes  the  base  ingratitude  which  Israel 
displays  towards  Yahweh.  He  has  loved  Jacob  and 
hated  Esau,  so  that  while  He  has  doomed  Edom  to  per- 
petual desolation.  He  has  brought  Israel  back  from  exile. 
And  a  bright  future  lies  before  the  righteous.  For  the 
Day  of  Yahweh  is  at  hand,  when  like  a  refiner's  fire  Yahweh 
will  purge  away  the  dross.     Then  the  difference  will  be 


THE    BIRTH    OF    JUDAISM       131 

clearly  seen  between  the  good  and  the  wicked.  The 
prophet  lays  special  stress  on  the  priestly  functions  and 
Temple  service,  contrasting  a  glowing  and  rather  idealised 
picture  of  Levi's  past  history  with  its  present  debasement. 
His  attitude  to  the  ritual  is  very  unlike  that  of  the  older 
prophets,  yet  he  has  not  lost  the  ethical  note,  even  though 
it  sounds  more  faintly  in  his  message. 

Very  striking  is  his  attitude  to  the  heathen.  In  his 
language  on  Edom  he  echoes  the  hate  expressed  by 
many  exilic  or  post-exilic  writers,  who  never  forgave  or 
forgot  the  exultation  of  the  Edomites  over  the  destruction 
of  Jerusalem.  And  he  strongly  condemns  marriage  with 
foreign  wives.  But  on  the  other  hand  we  owe  to  him 
the  remarkable  words  in  i.  11  :  "  For  from  the  rising  of 
the  sun  even  unto  the  going  down  of  the  same  my  name 
is  great  among  the  Gentiles ;  and  in  every  place  incense 
is  offered  unto  my  name  and  a  pure  offering :  for  my 
name  is  great  among  the  Gentiles,  saith  the  Lord  of 
hosts."  The  reference  is  not  to  the  future  but  to  the 
present.  The  prophet  can  hardly  mean  that  everywhere 
in  heathendom  there  are  already  proselytes  to  the  religion 
of  Israel  to  be  found.  He  means  rather  that  the  heathen 
worship  Yahweh,  and  that  their  sacrifices  are  really  offered 
to  Him.  So  liberal  an  interpretation  of  heathenism  is  sur- 
prising, especially  in  a  prophet  of  Malachi's  predilections, 
but  such  seems  to  be  the  true  meaning  of  the  passage. 


132     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

It  is  probable  that  the  greater  part  of  Isa.  Ivi.-lxvi.  be- 
longs to  this  period.  It  is  on  the  whole  unlikely  that 
these  chapters  are  all  from  the  same  hand.  They  have 
considerable  affinity  witb  Malachi,  though  they  often 
reach  a  higher  spiritual  standpoint.  Religious,  social, 
and  material  conditions  are  alike  unsatisfactory.  The 
desolate  cities  still  remain  to  be  restored,  the  walls  of 
Zion  are  still  unbuilt. 

The  cause  of  their  misery  is  not  Yahweh's  inability 
to  hear,  but  their  flagrant  sins,  which  have  separated  Him 
from  them,  and  which  make  their  zealous  religionism 
hateful  in  His  eyes.  There  are  even  sterner  denuncia- 
tions of  some  who  are  addicted  to  certain  forms  of  idolatry. 
Probably  the  reference  is  to  the  half-heathen  Samaritans. 
They  had  met  with  refusal  the  gracious  invitation  of 
Yahweh  to  abandon  their  practices  and  enter  the  Jewish 
community.  In  no  measured  terms  the  prophet  con- 
demns their  necromancy,  their  human  sacrifice,  their 
magical  rites  and  gruesome  sacrificial  meals. 

These  chapters  reveal  a  blend  of  the  ethical  and  cere- 
monial such  as  we  find  in  Ezekiel.  The  treatment  of 
fasting  is  worthy  of  the  older  prophets.  The  fast  which 
Yahweh  approves  is  not  mere  abstinence  from  food,  with 
the  external  signs  of  mourning.  It  is  the  care  for  the 
destitute  and  the  breaking  of  fetters.  And  the  prophet's 
vocation  is  described  in  beautiful  language,  made  the 


THE    BIRTH    OF    JUDAISM       133 

more  sacred  that  Jesus  chose  the  passage  to  describe 
His  own  mission.  The  Spirit  of  Yahweh  rests  upon  Him 
because  He  has  anointed  Him  to  preach  glad  tidings 
to  the  poor,  to  bind  up  the  broken-hearted,  to  an- 
nounce release  to  the  captives,  to  comfort  the  mourners, 
to  proclaim  the  acceptable  year  of  Yahweh  and  His  Day 
of  vengeance.  Yahweh  is  the  high  and  lofty  One,  who 
inhabits  eternity,  whose  Name  is  Holy.  Yet  while  He 
dwells  in  the  high  and  holy  place  He  dwells  also  with 
him  who  is  of  a  humble  and  contrite  spirit.  He  looks 
to  that  man  who  is  poor  and  of  a  contrite  spirit  and  that 
trembles  at  His  word. 

Yet  side  by  side  with  this  strong  ethical  and  religious 
interest  there  is  a  concern  for  the  ceremonial  side  of  the 
religion  which  is  specially  characteristic  of  Ezekiel  and 
those  who  stood  under  his  influence.  Sabbath  observ- 
ance is  coupled  with  abstinence  from  moral  evil.  To 
the  Temple  and  its  glory  some  of  the  loveliest  sections 
in  the  prophecy  are  devoted.  It  is,  however,  not  merely 
a  place  for  sacrifice,  but  pre-eminently  a  house  of  prayer. 
And  to  it  all  nations  are  welcomed,  drawn  to  it  by  the 
supernatural  radiance  which  streams  from  it.  Yet  the 
nations  serve  as  a  foil  to  Israel ;  they  adorn  the  Temple 
with  their  wealth,  and  act  as  menials  to  the  Jews.  Edom 
is  the  object  of  unrelenting  hate.  Yahweh  tramples  it  in 
His  fury  till   its  blood  dyes  all   His  raiment  red,  and 


134     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

marvels  that  the  nations  have  left  Him  to  tread  the  wine- 
press alone. 

According  to  the  usual  chronology  Ezra  the  priest 
and  scribe  came  from  Babylon  to  Jerusalem  with  a 
company  of  exiles  in  458  b.c.  His  main  achievement 
on  this  visit  was  to  dissolve  all  marriages  between  Jews 
and  foreign  women.  This  was  carried  through  with 
what  seems  to  us  great  harshness  and  rigour,  and  it  ad- 
mirably expressed  the  spirit  of  Judaism.  The  land  was 
felt  to  be  impure,  and  any  connection  with  the  people 
of  the  land  tainted  the  holy  remnant.  Some  years  later 
we  find  Nehemiah  the  governor  fiercely  assaulting  Jews 
who  had  contracted  mixed  marriages.  On  his  second 
visit,  which,  according  to  the  generally  accepted  but  con- 
tested date,  fell  in  the  year  444  b.c,  Ezra  was  able  with 
the  help  of  Nehemiah  to  carry  through  one  of  the  most 
momentous  revolutions  which  the  religion  of  Israel  ever 
experienced.  Deuteronomy  had  profoundly  influenced 
Ezekiel,  and  Ezekiel's  sketch  of  religious  institutions  for 
the  restored  community  formed  the  basis  of  what  is 
commonly  called  the  Priestly  Document  (P).  This  is 
found  in  portions  of  Genesis,  in  large  parts  of  Exodus, 
Leviticus,  Numbers,  and  Joshua.  It  is  marked  by  a 
peculiar  vocabulary  and  structure  of  sentences,  by  a  love 
for  constant  repetition  and  stereotyped  formulae,  which 
betray  the  hand  of  the  ecclesiastical  lawyer.     Such  also 


THE    BIRTH    OF    JUDAISM       135 

are  his  standpoint  and  the  interests  which  absorb  him. 
The  matchless  beauty  of  the  older  stories  of  the  patriarchs 
make  no  appeal  to  him  ;  he  has  no  eye  for  the  play  of 
emotion,  and  understands  neither  love  nor  hate.  Dry, 
precise,  formal,  he  cares  nothing  for  the  romance  which 
fires  the  blood  or  the  moving  spectacle  of  man's  warfare 
with  his  fate.  He  begins  with  the  story  of  creation,  but 
soon  retreats  from  this  universal  point  of  view,  and 
narrows  down  the  interest  to  the  fortunes  of  the  Hebrew 
patriarchs  and  people.  The  author  has  a  clearly  defined 
idea  of  progressive  revelation,  the  stages  of  which  are 
marked  by  the  names  of  Adam,  Noah,  Abraham,  and 
Moses.  The  chief  interest  is  in  the  ceremonial  side  of 
the  religion,  for  the  due  performance  of  which  minute 
regulations  are  made.  Anthropomorphism  is  carefully 
avoided,  and  the  feeling  for  Yahweh's  holiness  is  very 
pronounced.  Much  stress  is  laid  on  distinctively  Jewish 
observances,  such  as  the  Sabbath  and  circumcision. 
The  deepened  sense  of  sin  finds  expression  in  the  institu- 
tion of  two  new  types  of  sacrifice,  the  sin-ofiering  and 
the  guilt-offering.  The  peace-offering,  which  represented 
the  primitive  idea  of  sacrifice,  that  of  a  meal  in  which 
the  Deity  and  his  worshipper  shared,  sinks  into  compara- 
tive insignificance,  while  those  sacrifices  in  which  the 
whole  victim  is  retained  by  God  or  part  eaten  by  the 
priests,    His   representatives,    become   very   important. 


136     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

This  was  aided  by  the  centralisation  of  the  worship, 
which  by  detaching  the  sacrifices  from  their  local  associa- 
tions, destroyed  their  communal  character,  and  obliter- 
ated the  social  while  emphasising  the  religious  element. 
He  has  elaborate  regulations  as  to  uncleanness  and 
purification.  Naturally  he  did  not  invent  much  of  this 
complex  system.  Large  parts  of  it  were  of  immemorial 
antiquity  ;  indeed  it  is  only  in  the  light  of  savage  parallels 
that  many  elements  in  it  can  be  understood.  In  many 
respects  the  Priestly  Law  codified  already  existing  custom. 
To  some  extent  it  carried  to  a  logical  conclusion  the 
changes  involved  in  the  centralisation  of  the  worship. 
At  some  points  innovations  were  introduced.  The 
combination  of  this  document  with  the  earlier  sections 
of  sacred  history  and  law  down  to  the  death  of  Moses 
produced  the  Pentateuch,  largely  in  its  present  form. 

The  chief  work  of  Ezra  was  to  introduce  the  com- 
pleted Law  and  secure  its  acceptance  by  the  people. 
Henceforth  the  Law  becomes  the  dominant  power  in 
Jewish  life ;  with  its  acceptance  Judaism  had  its  birth. 
Although  the  Priestly  Code  exalted  and  enriched  the 
priesthood,  and  the  central  sanctuary  now  gained  the 
exclusive  position  which  Josiah  had  only  temporarily 
won  for  it,  yet  the  Law  was  greater  than  priesthood  or 
Temple.  Thus  the  scribe  became  even  more  important 
than  the  priest.     The  influence  of  the  latter  was  concen- 


THE    BIRTH    OF    JUDAISM       137 

trated  in  the  Temple,  while  the  former  was  supreme  in 
the  synagogue,  which  could  be  planted  wherever  there 
were  Jews  requiring  a  place  of  worship.  And  the 
scribe's  function  was  not  simply  that  of  copying,  but 
that  of  interpreting  and  making  a  hedge  about  the  Law. 
It  would  be  unjust  to  represent  this  as  a  retrograde 
movement.  We  cannot,  of  course,  rate  the  intrinsic 
religious  value  of  the  Law  so  high  as  that  of  the  great 
prophets.  But  we  can  recognise  the  guiding  of  Provi- 
dence in  what  seems  at  first  the  descent  from  the 
prophetic  religion  to  legalism.  The  latter  stands  to  the 
former  somewhat  as  Ezekiel  to  Jeremiah.  In  both 
cases  chronological  sequence  is  no  indication  of  relative 
worth.  But  apart  from  the  firm  structure  erected  by  the 
Law,  the  higher  religion  of  the  prophets  might  never 
have  maintained  its  existence  in  Israel ;  it  would  have 
perished  for  want  of  a  shelter.  "The  Law  came  in 
beside  "  that  it  might  discipline  the  people  and  prepare 
them  for  the  final  religion  in  which  the  prophetic  re- 
ligion received  its  complete  fulfilment. 


CHAPTER    XII 

THE   WANING   OF   PROPHECY 

It  was  inevitable  that  prophecy  should  dwindle  away  in 
the  atmosphere  of  legalism,  and  in  so  far  as  it  survived 
should  undergo  transformation.  The  will  of  Yahweh 
was  made  known  in  His  Law;  the  water  of  life  was 
stored  in  a  reservoir,  and  did  not  burst  like  a  leaping 
fountain  from  the  inspired  spirit.  But  even  in  this 
decadent  period  there  was  one  who  ranks  with  the 
greatest  in  the  whole  line  of  prophets. 

This  is  the  writer  to  whom  we  owe  the  Book  of 
Jonah.  The  author  takes  up  the  message  of  the  Second 
Isaiah,  that  Israel  was  called  to  be  the  revealer  of  the 
true  God  to  the  heathen.  Yet  he  seems  to  be  free  from 
the  narrowness  which  marred  the  otherwise  noble  and 
generous  position  of  the  great  prophet  of  the  Exile. 
He  depicts  the  heathen  in  the  most  favourable  light, 
and  reserves  all  his  pitiless  satire  for  the  savage  bigotry 
of  the  Jews  and  their  bitter  hatred  of  the  heathen.     In 

an  allegory,  constructed  with  the  highest  art,  and  set 

133 


THE    WANING    OF    PROPHECY     139 

fortti  in  the  most  concise  and  pregnant  language,  he 
sketches  the  attitude  of  Israel  to  the  heathen  in  the 
guise  of  a  story.  Jonah  the  prophet  is  sent  to  Nineveh 
to  proclaim  God's  judgment  upon  it.  He  disobeys  the 
call  and  takes  ship  to  Tarshish.  He  is  a  monotheist  in 
theology,  yet  seeks  to  flee  from  the  presence  of  Yahweh, 
localising  his  Deity  and  thus  nullifying  his  monotheism. 
But  Yahweh  follows  him  with  a  tempest,  and  the  sailors, 
who  are  most  attractively  represented,  are  at  last  com- 
pelled, in  spite  of  their  reluctance,  to  escape  destruc- 
tion by  casting  the  rebellious  prophet  overboard.  He 
is  swallowed  by  a  fish,  and  on  his  prayer  is  vomited  on 
dry  land.  He  takes  up  the  task  he  has  found  it  useless 
to  evade,  but  long  before  he  has  proclaimed  his  message 
through  the  whole  of  Nineveh,  the  city  is  moved  to 
contrition,  and  on  its  penitence  is  spared.  Jonah  is  very 
angry  that  his  hate  of  Nineveh  has  not  been  glutted  by  its 
destruction.  It  was  his  fear  lest  his  lust  for  vengeance 
should  be  disappointed  that  had  made  him  in  the  first 
instance  unwilling  to  go  to  Nineveh.  By  creating  and 
then  destroying  a  gourd,  which  during  its  brief  existence 
afforded  the  prophet  a  grateful  shelter,  God  seeks  to 
lead  him  from  his  own  tenderness  for  the  gourd,  and  re- 
sentment at  its  destruction,  to  some  sympathy  with  His 
own  tender  care  for  Nineveh,  with  its  teeming  myriads 


I40     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

of  souls,  all  dear  to  God.  Jonah  stands  in  this  parable 
for  Israel,  the  episode  of  the  fish  for  Israel's  exile  and 
restoration.  The  final  plea  of  Yahweh  to  Jonah  corre- 
sponds to  the  Book  of  Jonah  itself,  hence  the  book 
stops  where  it  does,  since  it  is  quite  uncertain  how  Israel 
will  respond  to  the  appeal  to  rise  above  its  exclusive- 
ness,  renounce  its  hate  of  the  Gentiles,  and  carry  the 
knowledge  of  the  true  God  to  these  souls  that  sit  in 
darkness  but  are  longing  for  the  light. 

But  this  noble  faith  in  the  virtues  of  the  heathen  and 
their  readiness  to  welcome  the  truth  did  little  to  check 
the  growing  alienation  of  the  Jew  from  the  Gentile,  which 
was  fostered  by  the  sense  of  spiritual  superiority  and  the 
resentment  of  a  proud  people  against  its  political  servi- 
tude. Edom  was  always  the  object  of  the  deepest  and 
most  intimate  hate.  But  the  Jews  were  only  too  ready 
to  turn  for  consolation  from  the  wretchedness  of  their 
lot  to  lurid  dreams  of  a  triumphant  Messiah  ruling  the 
nations  with  a  rod  of  iron  or  shattering  them  like  a 
potter's  vessel.  It  is  one  of  the  dark  limitations  of  the 
Old  Testament  that  not  a  few  of  its  later  writers  fed  this 
unhallowed  fire.  The  experiences  of  the  Maccabsean 
struggle  intensified  the  hatred  of  the  Jews  for  the  heathen, 
while  its  victories  enhanced  their  already  exuberant  self- 
esteem.     Both  of  these  tendencies  find  expression  in  the 


THE    WANING    OF    PROPHECY     141 

Book  of  Esther,  a  singularly  unpleasing  example  of  the 
vindictive  bigotry  and  megalomania  of  the  baser  Judaism, 
though  redeemed  in  some  measure  by  the  self-renouncing 
patriotism  of  the  heroine. 

The  most  important  feature  in  the  history  of  the  later 
prophecy  is  its  gradual  transformation  into  apocalyptic. 
This  feature  has  been  touched  upon  more  than  once, 
and  it  is  now  necessary  to  refer  to  it  rather  more  fully. 
For  the  most  part  the  Jewish  apocalypses  strictly  so 
called  were  not  received  into  the  Old  Testament ;  the 
Book  of  Daniel  is  the  only  exception.  But  several  of 
the  later  prophecies  are  more  or  less  deeply  tinged  with 
an  apocalyptic  colouring.  As  prophecy  became  more 
literary  it  rested  more  and  more  on  the  study  of  older 
writings.  The  impulse  to  independent  utterance  was 
weakened ;  there  was  less  original  contribution,  and  more 
combination  of  the  very  varied  forecasts  of  the  future 
into  a  consistent  eschatology.  Not  earlier  prophecies 
alone,  but  ancient  traditional  lore  about  the  beginning 
and  the  end  of  things,  were  embodied  in  these  schemes. 
The  stimulus  which  gave  them  birth  was  the  need  of  a 
glorious  future,  to  which  faith  might  escape  from  the 
despair  of  the  present.  And  for  the  realisation  of  such 
a  future  they  had  no  hope  but  in  God.  He  who  had 
entrusted  the  world's  government  to  the  angel-princes  of 


142     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

the  nations  was  tolerating  their  misrule  and  the  oppres- 
sion of  His  people  till  their  predestined  time  had  run 
out ;  then  He  would  Himself  overwhelm  the  angelic  host 
of  the  high  ones  on  high  and  the  earthly  kings  whom 
they  had  used  as  the  tools  of  their  malice  against  Israel. 
Then,  when  their  oppressors  had  been  subdued  and 
punished,  the  kingdom  of  the  saints  would  be  established. 
There  is  no  hint  in  the  politics  of  the  time  that  any 
change  is  impending,  but  the  seer  can  read  the  hand- 
writing on  the  wall  and  proclaim  that  the  hour  of  destiny 
has  struck.  For  nothing  is  to  lead  up  to  it.  "  When 
they  are  saying,  Peace  and  safety,  then  sudden  destruc- 
tion Cometh  upon  them."  The  future  is  cut  loose  from 
the  present ;  not  gradual  development  but  sudden  catas- 
trophe effects  the  transition  from  one  to  the  other.  The 
literary  form  of  apocalypse  was  singular.  It  was  usual 
to  select  some  ancient  seer,  such  as  Enoch  or  Baruch,  to 
-whom  the  vision  of  the  future,  often  expressed  in  an 
obscure  and  bizarre  symbolism,  was  unfolded.  The 
history  down  to  the  writer's  own  time  is  given  in  the  form 
of  detailed  prediction.  The  vision  passes  into  gene- 
ralities when  it  leaves  the  assumed  for  the  actual  future. 
Several  of  the  features  which  have  been  enumerated 
are,  of  course,  absent  from  the  post-exilic  prophets,  so 
that  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  call  them  apocalyptists. 


THE    WANING    OF    PROPHECY     143 

But  the  authors  of  Joel,  .Zech.  ix.-xiv.,  Isaiah  xxxiv., 
XXXV.,  and  above  all  Isaiah  xxiv.-xxvii.  illustrate  the  drift 
towards  apocalyptic  which  had  already  been  discernible 
in  Zephaniah,  Ezekiel,  and  Zechariah  i.-viii.  It  is  not 
possible  to  deal  with  these  prophecies  in  detail ;  such 
points  as  demand  attention  are  best  reserved. 

The  Book  of  Daniel  may  be  dated  about  the  year 
165  B.C.  It  was  written  to  encourage  the  Jews  of 
Palestine  in  their  resistance  to  the  attempt  of  the 
Syrian  king,  Antiochus  Epiphanes,  to  extirpate  the  Jewish 
religion.  The  author  enforces  his  lesson  of  unflinching 
loyalty  to  God  and  unswerving  obedience  to  His  law  by 
the  example  of  Daniel  and  his  companions.  Their 
refusal  to  defile  themselves  with  the  ceremonially  un- 
clean food  of  the  heathen  king  was  rewarded  by  promo- 
tion. Daniel's  three  friends  refuse  to  worship  the  golden 
image  set  up  by  Nebuchadnezzar,  and  walk  free  and  un- 
harmed in  the  midst  of  the  fiery  furnace  to  which  they 
were  doomed  for  their  disobedience.  Daniel  himself 
refuses  to  desist  from  prayer,  and  is  untouched  by  the 
lions  into  whose  den  he  is  cast.  The  pride  of  Nebu- 
chadnezzar is  humbled  by  mania,  the  profanity  of 
Belshazzar  is  visited  with  defeat  and  death.  Thus 
history  is  shown  to  teach  that  God  rewards  the  fidelity 
of   His    servants,    while    disaster    awaits    the    godless 


144     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

oppressor.  The  visions  are  similarly  intended  to  steady 
the  Jews  under  the  terrible  temptation  to  apostasy  by 
the  assurance  that  dominion  will  soon  pass  from  the 
brutal  powers  of  heathenism  to  the  saints  of  the  Most 
High. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

SAGES  AND  PSALMISTS 

When  we  speak  of  Hebrew  wisdom  we  must  not  think 
of  it  as  concerned  with  the  problems  of  metaphysics 
which  absorb  the  attention  of  Western  philosophers.  It 
was  concrete  not  abstract,  practical  not  speculative.  Its 
task  was  not  to  win  an  ordered  and  harmonious  concep- 
tion of  the  universe,  but  to  teach  men  how  they  might 
direct  their  way  aright.  Even  where  it  busied  itself  with 
problems,  it  was  a  practical  interest  which  supplied  the 
impulse.  We  have  no  reason  to  doubt  that  from  the 
earliest  times  there  were  those  who  reflected  on  life  and 
conduct,  and  embodied  their  observations  in  picturesque 
parable  or  terse  aphorism.  Many  of  the  maxims  in  the 
Book  of  Proverbs  may  well  be  quite  ancient,  and  not  a 
few  may  have  come  from  Solomon  himself.  But  for 
reasons  which  must  be  sought  rather  in  an  introduction 
to  the  Old  Testament,  we  must  regard  the  Book  of 
Proverbs,  no  less  than  those  of  Job  and  Ecclesiastes,  as 

products  of  the  post-exilic  period.     Judaism  forms  its 

145  K 


146     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

background,  the  battle  with  idolatry  has  ended,  the 
burning  questions  of  the  prophetic  period  lie  in  the  past. 
Indeed  the  description  of  the  Divine  Wisdom  in  the 
eighth  chapter  is  of  such  a  character  that  we  can  hardly- 
refuse  to  assign  it  to  a  comparatively  late  post-exilic  date. 
The  main  body  of  the  book  consists  of  maxims  for  the 
right  conduct  of  life,  written  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
virtuous  middle  classes,  and  with  a  firm  belief  that 
morality  and  prosperity  went  hand  in  hand.  The 
shrewd  worldly  wisdom,  the  prudential  note,  the  value 
placed  on  success,  perhaps  bulk  too  largely  m  the 
common  estimate  of  the  book,  and  do  injustice  to  its 
finer,  nobler,  and  more  generous  qualities.  And  even 
the  lower  element  has  its  place  in  any  sober  judgment  of 
life.  Society  needs  it  for  a  stable  basis,  the  commercial 
world  has  much  to  learn  from  the  insistence  on  integrity, 
while  many  of  the  children  of  light  would  be  all  the 
better  for  some  of  that  wisdom  in  which  they  are 
notoriously  deficient. 

The  greatest  example  of  Hebrew  wisdom  is  the  Book 
of  Job,  the  date  of  which  is  perhaps  about  400  B.C.  Its 
theme  is  the  suffering  of  the  righteous,  its  problem  the 
harmony  of  such  suffering  with  the  righteousness  of  God. 
Job  suffers  that  the  disinterested  character  of  his  virtue 
may  be  vindicated  against  the  cynicism  of  the  Satan. 


SAGES    AND    PSALMISTS         147 

He  triumphantly  emerges  from  the  ordeal,  but  now  a 
new  question  arises  :  How  is  Job,  conscious  of  his 
innocence  and  ignorant  of  the  reason  for  his  calamities, 
to  reconcile  with  the  Divine  righteousness  the  suffering 
which  stamped  him  in  men's  eyes  as  a  sinner  ?  It  seemed 
as  if  God  had  borne  false  witness  against  him  before  the 
world.  And  yet  he  had  lived  a  long  life,  happy  in  the 
consciousness  of  God's  goodness.  It  is  the  collision 
between  the  settled  habit  of  piety  based  on  the  current 
theology  and  supported  by  personal  experience,  and  the 
present  evidence  of  God's  implacable  hostility,  which 
lends  its  intense  dramatic  interest  to  the  book.  As  the 
debate  proceeds  between  him  and  the  three  friends  who 
represent  the  orthodoxy  of  their  time,  the  hero,  stung  by 
the  calm  insolence  of  their  assumption  that  sin  alone 
can  account  for  such  misfortune,  wounded  still  more 
deeply  by  the  arrows  of  the  Almighty,  feels  his  view  of 
God's  goodness  and  righteousness  shattered  against  the 
invincible  consciousness  of  his  own  innocence.  His 
own  unmerited  suffering  has  taken  the  scales  from  his 
eyes,  and  everywhere  he  sees  the  evidence  of  an  immoral 
or  non-moral  government  of  the  world.  It  is  not  the 
world's  agony,  however,  but  his  own  which  absorbs  his 
attention.  And  here  his  mind  oscillates  between  the  two 
forces  which  are  fighting  for  his  soul.     At  times  he  sees 


148     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

nothing  but  a  calculated  malevolence  in  God's  earlier 
favour,  designed  to  make  his  present  trial  more  bitter. 
But  gradually  the  memory  of  the  past  reasserts  its 
influence,  and  he  recognises  in  it  a  true  expression  of 
God's  earlier  attitude  to  him.  But  this  in  no  way  re- 
moves the  conviction  of  God's  present  enmity.  How, 
then,  is  he  to  adjust  the  two  contradictory  attitudes? 
His  faith  in  God's  essential  friendliness  triumphs.  God's 
present  hostility  does  not  represent  His  permanent 
character.  It  is  only  a  passing  mood,  from  which  God 
will  revert  to  His  earlier,  better  self.  But  when  His  old 
love  for  Job  awakes  again  in  His  breast  it  will  be  too  late. 
Job  will  have  left  the  warm  life  of  earth  for  that  gloomy 
underworld  whence  none  returned,  and  where  man  and 
God  could  no  longer  have  fellowship  with  each  other. 
But  what  if  man  might  come  back  to  earth  ?  then  God's 
regret  for  His  passionate  outburst  might  not  be  too  late. 
Job  is  fascinated  by  the  thought,  but  he  steadily  sets 
it  aside.  He  has  nothing  to  hope  from  God  so  far  as 
any  renewal  of  the  old  happy  fellowship  is  concerned. 
God's  repentance  will  come  too  late,  and  He  will  Him- 
self have  to  suffer  the  loss  of  the  communion  He 
had  prized  in  the  past.  But  this  matters  less  to  Job 
than  we  might  have  anticipated,  deeply  though  the  pathos 
of  the  situation  moves  him.     After  all,  life  must  end  at 


SAGES    AND    PSALMISTS         149 

last ;  the  happiest  day  must  merge  in  the  everlasting  night. 
From  such  a  fate  even  Job  could  in  no  case  have  escaped. 
But  there  is  another  question,  which  troubles  him  still 
more,  and  that  is  the  question  of  his  reputation.  The 
world,  even  his  intimate  friends,  count  him  a  grievous 
sinner,  and  God  has  set  His  approval  upon  their  verdict. 
He  knows  that  he  is  innocent,  and  the  bitterest  element 
in  his  suffering  is  that  the  honour  he  prizes  more  than 
life  is  so  foully  wronged.  He  can  get  no  redress  against 
God,  for  men  assume  that  Omnipotence  and  Moral 
Perfection  are  convertible  terms.  His  friends  believe 
him  guilty ;  posterity  will  not  reverse  his  condemnation. 
Who,  then,  is  left  to  stand  up  for  him  against  God  ?  Yet 
the  one  thing  he  cannot  bear  is  that  the  stain  should  for 
ever  remain  on  his  reputation.  So  this  intolerable  craving 
for  his  vindication  combines  with  his  memory  of  God's 
goodness  in  the  past.  And  thus  he  rises  to  his  great 
thought  that  the  God  of  the  future  will  right  him  against 
the  God  of  the  present.  His  Vindicator  lives  though 
Job  himself  will  die,  and  He  will  stand  on  Job's  grave  to 
proclaim  his  innocence.  It  will  not  mean  for  him  a 
return  to  earth  or  any  renewal  of  his  ancient  fellowship 
with  God.  But  one  supreme  moment  of  happiness  will 
be  vouchsafed  to  him.  He  will  be  permitted  to  see  God 
as  He  thus  vindicates  his  honour. 


I50     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

Yet  though  Job  almost  swoons  with  emotion  as  this 
conviction  entrances  him,  it  brings  him  no  explanation  of 
his  calamities,  nor  does  it  ease  in  the  slightest  the  pressure 
of  the  world's  woe.  Even  after  this  splendid  utterance 
he  criticises  God's  government  with  unexampled  boldness. 
He  closes  the  debate  with  a  pathetic  description  of  his 
former  greatness  and  his  present  misery,  and  then  in 
one  of  the  finest  and  loftiest  chapters  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment he  solemnly  clears  himself  of  such  sin  as  might 
justify  the  change  in  his  fortunes.  Conscious  of  his 
rectitude,  he  would  fain  have  God's  indictment  against 
him.  Proudly  he  would  wear  it  in  God's  very  presence, 
lifted  above  the  shame  of  it  by  the  approval  of  his 
conscience. 

And  now  God  speaks  to  him  from  the  roaring  of  the 
storm.  He  brings  Job  no  word  of  comfort,  nor  does  He 
seek  to  alleviate  even  by  a  hint  the  mystery  of  his  suffer- 
ing. He  bruises  him  with  scorn,  brings  home  to  him 
his  weakness  and  his  ignorance.  He  unrolls  before  him 
the  vast  panorama  of  nature,  and  presses  on  Job  how 
inexplicable  its  wonders  are.  And  thus  he  bids  him 
look  away  from  himself  and  consider  the  vast  universe 
which  God  must  govern.  Can  he  who  is  ignorant  of  its 
simplest  secrets  be  a  competent  critic  of  God's  ways? 
If  he  will  only  take  time  to  ponder  the  world's  marvels 


SAGES    AND    PSALMISTS         151 

he  will  learn  that  man  is  not  all,  and  that  God's  tender 
care  is  over  all  His  creatures.  Yet  it  is  not  this  brilliant 
demonstration  which  changes  Job's  attitude.  It  is  the 
vision  of  God  Himself  which  leads  him  to  loathe  his 
words  and  repent  in  dust  and  ashes.  In  other  words, 
Job  finds  rest  in  a  mystical  apprehension  of  God.  He 
understands  God's  action  no  better  now  than  before,  but 
now  he  is  sure  of  God  Himself.  It  is  imperative  that 
the  reason  for  his  trial  should  not  be  explained  to  him ; 
he  must  stay  his  soul  on  the  vision  of  God,  which  has 
given  him  the  certainty  that  all  is  well. 

The  same  problem  is  the  subject  of  three  Psalms, 
Pss.  xxxvii.,  xlix.,  Ixxiii.  The  first  of  these  proceeds  on 
conventional  lines,  and  need  not  detain  us.  The  second 
probably  asserts  that  a  different  destiny  is  reserved  in 
the  next  world  for  the  righteous  and  the  wicked.  The 
same  conviction  is  expressed  in  Ps.  Ixxiii.  But  this 
Psalm  also  closes  on  a  mystical  note.  In  one  of  the 
most  wonderful  passages  in  Hebrew  literature  the 
Psalmist  depicts  the  blessed  communion  he  has  with 
God :  "  Whom  have  I  in  heaven  ?  and  possessing  thee, 
I  delight  in  nought  upon  earth." 

The  writer  of  this  Psalm  tells  us  that  his  feet  had 
well-nigh  swerved  when  he  considered  the  prosperity  of 
the  wicked.     Another  Jewish  writer  failed  to  keep  his 


152     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

footing.  The  author  of  Ecclesiastes,  whose  date  we 
may  most  plausibly  fix  as  about  200  B.C.,  was  forced  by 
his  observation  of  life  to  pessimism.  He  remains,  it  is 
true,  a  Theist,  but  his  Theism  is  not  of  the  kind  which 
fosters  religion.  God  is  the  Almighty  Ruler,  in  harmony 
with  whose  predestination  the  whole  course  of  history 
moves  in  endless  repetition.  But  deliberately  he  has 
humbled  the  pride  of  man  by  endowing  him  with  the 
instinct  for  action,  but  refusing  the  understanding  of  the 
laws  which  would  make  that  action  fruitful.  Thus,  not 
only  is  progress  made  impossible  by  the  destiny  which 
condemns  history  for  ever  to  repeat  itself,  but  even  a 
knowledge  of  the  principles  on  which  history  moves  is 
withheld  from  men.  So  what  God  sees  as  a  perfect 
harmony  appears  to  man  as  blind  chance.  Thus  all 
effort  is  doomed  to  futility ;  life  is  vanity,  and  striving 
after  wind.  Wisdom  and  pleasure  alike  are  vain,  as  may 
be  proved  by  experiment,  while  observation  brings  home 
to  us  the  universal  reign  of  misery.  Some  slight  allevia- 
tion is  possible,  though  within  very  narrow  limits.  Man 
cannot  escape  from  the  disease  which  we  call  life  except 
by  death,  and  which  is  preferable  is  a  question  he  answers 
in  accordance  with  his  mood.  But  while  the  pain  and 
unutterable  weariness  of  existence  cannot  be  avoided, 
man  may  drug  himself  by  a  prudent  enjoyment  of  such 


SAGES    AND    PSALMISTS  153 

pleasures  as  life  has  to  offer.  The  grim  skeleton,  it  is 
true,  will  always  be  present  at  the  feast.  Yet  let  man 
rejoice  in  his  youth,  remembering  that  his  capacity  for 
pleasure  will  fail  with  old  age,  and  that  in  the  gloomy 
underworld  the  days  of  darkness  will  be  many.  For  the 
author  sets  aside  altogether  the  higher  doctrine  of  the 
future  life. 

The  writer  was  better  than  he  conceived  his  God  to 
be.  He  cannot  bear  the  spectacle  of  the  world's  pain, 
and  he  can  find  no  remedy.  It  is  almost  strange  that  he 
remained  a  Theist.  Better  no  God  at  all  than  a  God 
who  deliberately  plans  such  an  existence  for  man !  But 
his  Judaism  so  far  triumphs  as  to  preserve  a  bare  Theism, 
though  his  pessimism  empties  it  of  all  religious  signifi- 
cance. In  its  original  form  the  book  naturally  seemed 
too  dangerous.  Its  ascription  to  Solomon  guaranteed 
its  orthodoxy,  6ut  its  apparent  deviation  from  the  con- 
ventional standard  made  it  necessary  to  neutralise  appear- 
ances by  orthodox  interpolations.  Thus  the  book  has 
fortunately  escaped  the  fate  to  which  an  understanding 
of  its  real  tendencies  would  naturally  have  consigned  it. 

One  of  the  most  noteworthy  creations  of  Judaism  still 
remains  to  be  mentioned.  This  is  the  Book  of  Psalms. 
It  would  be  obviously  impossible  to  give  even  a  brief 
outline  of  the  teaching  enshrined  in  this  book.     Since, 


154     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

however,  it  would  largely  cover  the  same  ground  as  a 
general  sketch  of  Jewish  theology,  its  necessary  exclusion 
is  the  less  to  be  regretted.  A  short  statement  may  there- 
fore suffice. 

While  it  is  by  no  means  improbable  that  some  portions 
of  the  Psalter  date  from  the  pre-exilic  period,  the  book 
as  a  whole  must  be  treated  as  post-exilic.  It  is  a  monu- 
ment of  the  piety  of  Judaism,  of  its  hopes  and  its  fears, 
its  conflicts  with  the  world  and  the  strife  within  its  own 
borders.  More  than  anything  else  it  disabuses  us  of  the 
mistake  that  Judaism  was  an  unspiritual  religion,  a  mere 
routine  of  ritual  observances  mechanically  performed. 
There  is  no  literature  which  so  completely  expresses  the 
whole  range  of  religious  emotion,  and  the  fact  that  not 
Jews  only  but  Christians  have  turned  to  it  as  an  unfailing 
aid  to  devotion  should  have  corrected  a  too  ungenerous 
estimate  of  Jewish  piety.  It  is  true  that  the  use  of  it 
has  been  too  undiscriminating,  since  not  a  little  expurga- 
tion is  needed  to  fit  it  for  Christian  worship.  The  bitter- 
ness of  language  in  which  the  writers  permit  themselves 
to  speak  of  their  enemies  may  no  doubt  be  palliated  by 
the  provocation  they  received  and  the  sense  that  the 
cause  they  represented  was  the  cause  of  God.  Moreover, 
in  many  cases  the  Psalmist  speaks  in  the  name  of  the 
community  rather  than  in  his  own.     Yet  while  all  these 


SAGES    AND    PSALMISTS         155 

considerations  should  be  borne  in  mind,  and  while  there 
can  be  no  healthy  moral  life  without  a  capacity  for 
righteous  indignation,  the  imprecations  of  the  Psalmists 
reveal  a  temper  which  no  Christian  can  approve  without 
disloyalty  to  the  Gospel,  but  which  is  only  too  character- 
istic of  much  in  the  Old  Testament. 

The  theology  of  th^  Psalter  is  popular  rather  than 
scholastic.  The  writers  had  been  trained  on  the  Law 
and  the  prophets.  They  are  fired  with  enthusiasm  for  the 
Law,  and  count  it  the  highest  privilege  to  participate  in 
the  Temple  worship.  They  bring  the  great  thoughts  of 
the  prophets  within  reach  of  the  humblest.  They  are 
not  for  the  most  part  original  thinkers  ;  their  theology  is 
secondary.  But  they  had  an  original  religious  experience 
of  an  intense  kind,  to  which  they  gave  a  classical  expres- 
sion. They  are  also  at  an  advantage  as  compared  with 
the  prophets  in  virtue  of  the  timeless  quality  of  their  utter- 
ances. No  doubt  their  language  often  becomes  more 
vivid  as  we  apprehend  their  historical  conditions.  But, 
broadly  speaking,  it  depends  but  little  for  intelligibility 
on  anything  outside  itself.  In  the  main,  and  in  what  is 
most  important,  the  Psalter  has,  while  the  prophets  have 
not,  been  understood  by  later  generations.  Naturally 
where  so  many  writers  have  been  at  work  we  find  a  rich 
variety  of  view,  but  the  similarity  is  even  more  striking 


156     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

than  the  diversity.  Since  the  Psalter  was  only  gradually 
compiled,  and  the  three  larger  collections  into  which 
it  may  be  analysed  contain  smaller  collections,  we 
cannot  speak  of  any  one  motive  as  guiding  the  compilers 
in  their  choice  of  Psalms.  The  Psalter  is  not  infrequently 
spoken  of  as  the  hymn-book  of  the  Second  Temple. 
The  term  is  somewhat  misleading  to  modern  ears,  and 
in  the  case  of  several  Psalms  it  is  questionable  whether 
this  object  was  contemplated  in  their  inclusion.  In  any 
case  the  Psalter  was  a  precious  manual  of  religion  for 
the  people,  guiding  their  thought  and  quickening  their 
devotion.  While  for  the  most  part  warmly  sympathetic 
with  the  ritual  system,  it  was  even  more  a  great  book 
of  heart-religion.  In  its  loftiest  passages  it  transcends 
the  legal  and  ritual,  and  utters  the  deep  penitence  of 
the  soul  for  its  sin,  its  thirst  for  the  living  God,  the  glad 
sense  of  blissful  fellowship,  and  the  communion  so  com- 
plete that  not  death  itself  can  sever  it. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  THEOLOGY  OF  JUDAISM 

So  far  we  have  traced  the  development  of  the  religion 
from  point  to  point,  paying  special  attention  to  the  con- 
tribution made  by  individual  writers.  It  remains  to 
give  a  brief  connected  account  of  the  leading  doctrines 
of  Judaism.  Where  the  material  is  so  large  and  the 
statement  so  many-sided  it  is  obvious  that  within  our 
limits  only  a  rough  summary  can  be  attempted,  which 
shall  aim  at  substantial  accuracy  without  undue  concern 
for  qualifications. 

In  its  doctrine  of  God,  Judaism  was  strictly  mono- 
theistic. This  inheritance  from  the  prophets  and  the 
Law  was  held  with  passionate  tenacity.  It  constituted 
the  fundamental  distinction  between  Judaism  and  other 
religions.  Yet  there  were  tendencies  towards  a  recogni- 
tion that  the  unity  of  God  was  complex  rather  than 
simple.  The  earlier  conception  of  the  Presence  of 
Yahweh  or  the  Angel  of  His  Presence  pointed  the  way, 
and  later  the  doctrine  of  the   Spirit   and  that  of  the 


158     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

Wisdom  of  God  moved  in  the  same  direction.  It  would, 
of  course,  be  a  mistake  to  treat  these  terms  as  expressing 
a  distinction  of  Persons  in  the  Godhead  in  the  Christian 
sense,  but  they  indicated  a  tendency  to  conceive  the 
Unity  as  the  home  of  distinction. 

The  conception  of  God  was  pure  and  lofty.  Stress  was 
laid  less  on  His  metaphysical  than  on  His  moral  attri- 
butes. The  former  are  not  ignored,  but  in  harmony 
with  Hebrew  genius  they  are  expressed  in  a  concrete 
rather  than  an  abstract  form.  What  is  said  implies  a 
belief  in  the  eternity,  spirituality,  omnipotence  and 
omniscience  of  God.  His  omnipresence  was  less  easy 
to  grasp  owing  to  the  ingrained  thought  of  God  as 
dwelling  in  a  particular  part  of  the  universe.  The 
inevitable  anthropomorphism  of  human  thought  made  it 
very  difficult  to  escape  from  spatial  conditions,  though 
formally  the  belief  would  have  been  accepted  that  God 
was  bound  by  the  limitation  neither  of  space  nor  time. 
His  moral  character  is  summed  up  in  the  term  holiness. 
This,  as  applied  to  God,  means  His  separation  from  all 
the  weakness  and  imperfections  of  His  creatures,  and 
thus  stands  for  His  Divinity  in  contrast  to  humanity. 
His  absolute  purity,  inflexible  justice,  severity  to  sin. 
His  fiery  wrath  against  wrong.  His  faithfulness  and 
truth.  His  righteousness.  His  loving-kindness  and  mercy, 


THE    THEOLOGY    OF   JUDAISM     159 

His  pity  and  his  grace,  are  all  recognised.  Hints  of  His 
Fatherhood  are  not  absent,  but  this  doctrine  is  not  fully 
formulated  in  the  Old  Testament. 

Naturally  God  is  identified  with  the  Creator  of  the 
universe.  We  have  no  evidence  for  the  belief  in  a 
creation  out  of  nothing,  though  this  may  quite  well  have 
been  what  was  really  intended.  The  representation  is 
coloured  by  the  old  Babylonian  myth  of  the  contest 
between  Marduk  the  god  of  light  and  Tiamat  the  chaos- 
demon  of  darkness.  From  the  priestly  creation  narrative 
(Gen.  i.  i-ii.  4a)  this  has  largely  disappeared,  but  there 
are  numerous  allusions  in  the  Old  Testament  to  God's 
ancient  victory  over  Rahab  or  Leviathan.  In  fact  it  is 
necessary  to  supplement  the  story  of  creation  in  the 
Priestly  Document  by  other  Old  Testament  references, 
especially  in  Job  and  the  Psalms.  The  Jews  conceived 
of  the  universe  much  as  the  Babylonians  did.  The 
earth  on  which  we  live  was  regarded  as  a  circular  plane, 
surrounded  by  an  ocean.  Beneath  it  lay  the  great  deep, 
or  the  abyss  of  waters.  This  is  not  to  be  identified 
with  the  sea,  but  lies  below  sea  and  land  alike.  There 
are,  however,  openings  in  the  bed  of  the  sea  which  con- 
nect with  this  submarine  abyss,  and  through  which  the 
sea  is  fed  by  a  regulated  supply.  If  these  springs  of  the 
sea  or  fountains  of  the  great  deep  are  broken  up,  as  at 


i6o     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

the  Deluge,  then  the  water  bursts  up  from  the  abyss  and 
devastates  the  world.  The  sky  was  a  solid  circular 
vault,  the  rim  of  which  rested  on  the  ocean  that  flowed 
round  the  earth.  Within  it  was  the  realm  of  light,  be- 
yond it  there  was  the  outer  darkness.  Across  its  earth- 
ward surface,  so  near  to  us  that  the  birds  brush  by  it  in 
their  flight,  the  heavenly  bodies  move  in  their  appointed 
track.  They  are  animate  beings,  each  with  its  name, 
each  coming  forth  at  God's  summons  from  its  resting- 
place  to  its  station  in  the  sky.  Above  the  firmament  there 
is  a  heavenly  ocean,  corresponding  in  the  upper  world 
to  the  subterranean  abyss  in  the  lower.  Originally  they 
were  one,  but  when  God  subdued  Chaos  He  divided  the 
waters  into  two  portions,  placing  the  solid  dome  of  the 
firmament  between  them.  There  are  windows  or  sluices 
in  the  sky,  through  which,  when  they  are  opened  or 
unsealed,  the  heavy  tropical  rain  descends.  At  the 
Deluge  not  only  were  the  fountains  of  the  abyss  broken 
up  but  the  windows  of  heaven  were  opened,  and  thus 
the  waters,  which  had  been  separated  at  creation,  were 
partially  reunited.  The  lighter  rains  do  not  come  from 
the  heavenly  ocean,  but  from  the  clouds,  which,  though 
they  float  in  the  air,  are  "  the  bottles  of  heaven,"  holding 
much  water  in  their  filmy  envelope. 

Raised  high  above  the  heavenly  ocean  is  the  hill  of 


THE    THEOLOGY    OF    JUDAISM     i6i 

Yahweh,  where  He  is  throned  in  light  and  holds  His 
heavenly  court  The  angels  are  "the  sons  of  God," 
by  which  is  meant  that  they  belong  to  the  order  of 
Elohim  or  heavenly  beings.  Like  God  Himself,  they 
are  composed  of  spirit.  Yet  they  are  susceptible  to 
the  perils  of  sensual  pleasure,  as  the  story  in  Gen.  vi.  1-4 
shows.  To  the  angels  God  has  entrusted  the  various 
nations,  reserving  Israel  for  His  own  peculiar  possession, 
though  in  Daniel  Israel  also  has  its  angel,  Michael.  At 
appointed  seasons  they  appear  before  God  to  give  an 
account  of  their  administration.  Of  evil  angels,  in  the 
later  sense  of  the  term,  we  learn  nothing  in  the  Old 
Testament.  It  is  true  that  the  angels  of  the  nations 
are  regarded  as  responsible  for  the  woes  of  Israel.  And 
thus  God  is  in  one  place  represented  as  pronouncing 
on  them  the  sentence  of  death,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
as  Elohim  they  would  be  naturally  immortal.  Usually, 
however,  the  angels  are  regarded  as  strictly  subordinate 
to  the  will  of  God.  This  is  true  of  the  angel  who  bears 
the  title  of  the  Satan,  and  who  must  not  be  identified 
with  the  devil.  It  is  his  function  to  test  the  reality  of 
men's  apparent  goodness,  to  act  as  counsel  for  the 
prosecution,  and  dispute  their  claim  to  righteousness 
before  God's  bar.  This  exclusive  preoccupation  mth 
the  evil  side  of  human  life  has  developed  a  cynical 


i62     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

disbelief  in  human  goodness,  and  he  stops  at  nothing 
to  prove  his  own  estimate  right.  Yet  this  is  out  of 
no  antagonism  to  God,  but  rather  that  no  one  shall 
substantiate  a  false  claim  for  lack  of  rigid  scrutiny  on 
his  part.  It  should  be  added  that  we  read  of  demoniacal 
creatures,  such  as  the  satyrs  and  other  uncanny  monsters, 
of  Azazel,  a  wilderness  demon  to  whom  the  sins  of 
Israel  are  despatched  on  the  Day  of  Atonement,  and 
of  Lilith,  a  night  demon  akin  to  the  vampire.  These, 
however,  have  their  place  rather  in  popular  superstition 
than  in  strict  theology. 

Man  was  created  by  God  in  His  own  image.  Originally 
this  may  have  borne  a  literal  anthropomorphic  sense, 
but  in  the  more  elevated  thought  of  Judaism  it  expressed 
rather  man's  spiritual  and  intellectual  than  his  physical 
resemblance  to  God.  He  is  appointed  ruler  of  all  the 
lower  orders  of  creation.  He  is  a  little  lower  than  the 
Elohim.  Yet  between  the  two  orders  of  being  there 
is  a  gulf  fixed  greater  than  the  phrase  would  indicate. 
For  the  Elohim  are  spirit  and  man  is  but  flesh.  The 
term  "  flesh "  is  used  not  simply  with  reference  to  the 
physical  material,  but  to  man's  weak  and  perishable 
nature.  Strictly  speaking  the  term  is  metaphysical 
rather  than  ethical,  but  the  contrast  to  the  Divine 
naturally  gave  it  in  some  cases  a  moral  colouring.     The 


THE    THEOLOGY    OF    JUDAISM     163 

supreme  proof  of  man's  fleshly  nature  lies  in  the  fact 
of  death.  He  is  a  frail  mortal.  However  long  his  life 
may  be,  it  comes  to  an  end  at  last.  The  pale  shade 
leaves  the  body  and  descends  into  Sheol,  the  gloomy 
underworld  which  lies  in  a  cavernous  region  below 
the  earth's  surface.  There  all  the  vast  multitudes  of 
the  dead  are  gathered,  the  small  and  great,  the  good 
and  the  evil.  Just  dimly  conscious  of  life,  apathetic, 
without  the  rich  warmth  and  movement  of  the  upper 
world,  they  drag  out  their  weary  interminable  exist- 
ence. Hence  the  supreme  blessing  earth  had  to  give 
was  long  Hfe,  for  here  man  might  be  happy  and  enjoy 
the  beatitude  of  fellowship  with  God,  but  in  Sheol  no 
communion  with  Him  was  any  longer  possible.  The 
later  Judaism,  however,  advanced  from  this  position 
along  two  lines.  In  the  apocalyptic  section,  Isa.  xxiv.- 
xxvii.,  which  may  be  dated  with  most  plausibility  about 
the  time  of  Alexander  the  Great,  we  first  meet  with 
a  doctrine  of  individual  resurrection.  To  re-people 
the  depleted  land  it  is  said  that  God's  life-giving  dew 
shall  descend  from  the  realm  of  light  and  revive  the 
pious  dead.  In  Daniel  the  thought  is  carried  still 
further,  and  a  resurrection  of  faithful  IsraeHtes  to 
honour  and  of  apostates  to  everlasting  contempt  is 
predicted.     But  besides  this  return  from  Sheol  to  earth, 


i64     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

a  few  passages  suggest  another  solution,  that  death 
should  not  interrupt  the  communion  between  the  saint 
and  his  God.  This  view,  however,  it  should  be  said, 
is  doubted  by  several  scholars,  who  find  a  different 
meaning  in  these  passages.  In  Isa.  xxv.  8  we  have  the 
remarkable  anticipation,  "  He  hath  swallowed  up  death 
for  ever." 

The  Old  Testament  recognises  the  universal  sinfulness 
of  man.  For  the  most  part  it  is  concerned  only  with  the 
practical  aspects  of  the  subject.  Speculations  as  to  the 
origin  of  sin  are  foreign  to  its  temper.  It  is  very  ques- 
tionable whether  the  doctrine  of  the  Fall  is  to  be  found 
in  it.  This  depends  on  the  view  we  take  of  the  story 
of  the  forbidden  fruit  in  Gen.  iii.  Unhappily  the 
problems  raised  by  the  narrative  are  too  complex  to 
admit  of  discussion  in  our  space.  Two  things,  however, 
must  be  borne  in  mind.  The  story  has  left  very  little 
mark  on  the  Old  Testament.  Further,  we  must  set 
aside  not  simply  our  own  theological  preconceptions, 
but  also  the  interpretation  placed  on  the  narrative  in  the 
non-canonical  Jewish  Hterature  and  by  Paul,  whose 
own  discussion  is  commonly  misunderstood,  and  seek  to 
understand  it  in  its  own  light.  It  is  possible  that  the 
strange  story  of  the  angel  marriages,  a  fragment  of  which 
is  now  preserved  in  Gen.  vi.,  may  have  been  originally 


THE    THEOLOGY    OF   JUDAISM     165 

intended  to  account  for  the  entrance  of  sin  into  the  world, 
but  in  its  present  connection  it  obviously  has  no  such 
significance.  According  to  a  very  anthropomorphic 
passage  in  the  introduction  to  the  story  of  the  Flood, 
Yahweh  was  Himself  disappointed  with  the  corruption 
of  the  human  heart,  and  repented  that  He  had  made 
man.  Elsewhere  He  excuses  the  inveterate  tendency  to 
evil  by  the  thought  of  man's  frailty :  "  He  remembered 
that  they  were  but  flesh." 

Naturally  the  Old  Testament  is  but  little  concerned 
with  the  sin  of  the  heathen  except  where  it  affects  Israel. 
That  the  Gentiles,  who  do  not  know  Yahweh,  should  be 
sinners  excites  no  surprise,  save  where  they  sink  below 
their  own  moral  standard.  But  what  moves  the  amaze- 
ment and  indignation  of  the  Hebrew  writers  is  the  sin  of 
Israel.  It  is  continually  brought  out  in  the  history,  is 
the  constant  theme  of  the  great  prophets  and  Psalmists, 
while  the  Law  and  the  warnings  of  the  sages  are  largely 
directed  to  its  prevention.  The  nation's  spiritual  privi- 
leges, its  intimate  relation  to  God,  only  set  in  the  darker 
light  its  ingratitude  and  disobedience,  and  lead  to  a 
stricter  reckoning.  Since  Israel  is  the  elect  nation  God 
will  visit  upon  it  all  its  iniquities. 

The  election  of  Israel  was  the  foundation  on  which  its 
religion  rested.     It  was  the  rooted   conviction  of  the 


i66     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

people,  but  its  real  significance  was  largely  misappre- 
hended. It  was  regarded  as  an  end  in  itself,  and  as  a 
token  of  Divine  favouritism  encouraging  them  to  presume 
on  God's  indulgence.  Against  this  practical  inference 
the  prophets  vehemently  protested.  But  some  at  least 
failed  to  rise  above  the  thought  that  Israel  was  God's 
favourite  people,  to  whose  interests  the  course  of  history 
was  to  be  made  subservient.  This  was  not  a  purely  self- 
regarding  attitude ;  the  egoistic  motive  is  blended  with 
concern  for  Yahweh's  interests,  which  were  regarded  as 
bound  up  with  Israel's  continued  existence.  The  actual 
condition  always  presented  a  glaring  contrast  to  what  be- 
fitted the  chosen  people  of  God.  Thus  there  arose  the 
confident  anticipation  of  a  glorious  future.  It  was 
natural  that  this  should  often  be  of  a  pr.edominantly 
political  character.  Israel's  enemies  were  to  be  subdued 
and  the  nation  receive  a  world-wide  dominion.  From 
these  military  and  imperial  aspirations  many  of  the 
prophets  were  not  free,  but  they  insisted  that  their 
fulfilment  implied  the  moral  reformation  of  Israel,  a 
vital  element  which  the  mass  of  the  people  ignored. 
The  social  conditions  of  the  era  of  blessedness  were 
sketched  in  brilliant  colours.  All  things  that  went  to 
make  life  happy — peace,  prosperity,  long  life,  a  numerous 
posterity,  immunity  from  sickness  and  disaster,  a  Divine 


THE    THEOLOGY    OF    JUDAISM     167 

protection  which  secured  the  people  against  all  its  ene- 
mies— were  included  in  these  dazzling  pictures.  There 
would  be  a  great  transformation  of  nature,  the  land 
would  be  marvellously  fertile,  and  the  beasts  of  prey 
would  lose  their  fierceness.  The  ancient  schism  between 
Judah  and  Israel  would  be  healed,  and  they  would 
return  to  Palestine  from  the  Exile  and  the  Dispersion, 
and  form  again  one  nation  under  a  Davidic  king. 

In  many  of  these  prophecies  there  is  no  explicit 
mention  of  this  monarch,  but  in  others  he  plays  a  lead- 
ing part.  For  the  sake  of  convenience  we  may  adopt 
the  custom  of  referring  to  him  as  the  Messiah,  though 
in  the  Old  Testament  the  word  does  not  occur  in  the 
technical  sense.  He  is  to  be  a  king  of  Davidic  descent, 
so  signally  endowed  with  the  Divine  Spirit  that  he  shall 
be  an  ideal  ruler  and  judge,  slaying  the  wicked  and 
exalting  the  righteous.  The  Messiah  is  designated  the 
Son  of  God,  but  this  term  was  not  employed  in  the 
sense  which  it  bears  in  Christian  theology.  Nor  must 
we  be  misled  by  the  English  rendering,  "  Mighty  God  " 
in  Isa.  ix.  6,  and  find  in  the  words  an  ascription 
of  Divinity  to  the  Messiah.  He  is  a  godlike  hero,  who 
must  pass  through  battle  to  undisputed  dominion,  and 
can  become  the  Prince  of  Peace  only  through  a  conflict 
in  which  he  crushes  the  heathen  nations  which  have  not 


i68     THE    RELIGION    OF    ISRAEL 

been  wise  in  time  and  submitted  to  him.  Henceforth 
he  will  rule  in  perpetual  peace  on  the  throne  of  David  in 
Zion,  over  a  land  no  longer  diminished  or  distressed  by 
the  invader.  With  all  the  military  zeal  which  animates 
these  Messianic  aspirations,  it  must  not  be  forgotten 
that  peace  is  their  goal,  when  the  weapons  of  war  shall 
be  turned  into  the  implements  of  agriculture,  when  the 
men  of  Israel  shall  dwell  each  under  his  own  vine  and 
fig-tree,  when  the  nations  shall  learn  war  no  more. 

But  while  some  consoled  themselves  for  their  miseries 
by  depicting  the  doom  of  their  oppressors,  it  would  be 
unjust  to  forget  those  who  struck  a  nobler  note.  They 
looked  at  the  Gentiles  with  no  vindictive  hate,  nor  were 
they  content  with  the  spectacle  of  a  heathen  host  swept 
out  of  existence  that  Yahweh  might  get  Himself  glory. 
The  Second  Isaiah,  it  is  true,  does  not  escape  from  a 
contracted  nationalism  which  sav;  in  Israel  the  favourite 
of  God,  though  the  author  of  the  Book  of  Jonah  rises 
clear  above  it.  But  in  the  description  of  Israel  as  the 
Servant  of  Yahweh,  whose  main  significance  in  the 
world's  history  was  to  carry  to  the  Gentiles  the  know- 
ledge of  the  true  God  and  to  suffer  for  their  sin,  he  rose 
to  a  height  far  loftier  than  that  reached  in  Messianic 
prophecy.  And  others  beside  the  author  of  the  Book 
of  Jonah  followed  in  his  steps.     In  Isa.  ii.  2-4  we  read 


THE    THEOLOGY    OF    JUDAISM     169 

that  the  nations  will  throng  to  Zion  to  learn  the  Law  of 
God,  and  submit  to  His  arbitration.  In  Isa.  xxv.  6,  7, 
we  read  of  the  feast  prepared  for  all  peoples  and  the 
removal  of  the  veil  which  has  hidden  from  them 
the  face  of  God.  And  in  Isa.  xix.  19-25,  Egypt  and 
Assyria  are  represented  as  uniting  with  each  other  and 
with  Israel  in  the  common  worship  of  Yahweh. 


SELECTED   LITERATURE 

No  thoroughly  satisfactory  treatment  of  the  subject  on 
an  adequate  scale  exists  in  English.  Much  the  best 
is  that  given  in  the  article  "Religion  of  Israel"  by 
E.  Kautzsch  in  the  extra  volume  of  Hastings'  "  Diction- 
ary of  the  Bible."  This  may  be  supplemented  by  many 
articles  in  the  course  of  the  "  Dictionary  "  itself.  The 
"  Encyclopsedia  Biblica"  does  not  deal  explicitly  with 
Biblical  Theology,  and  must  on  account  of  its  radical 
standpoint  and  extremely  speculative  textual  criticism 
be  used  with  caution.  But  it  contains  many  valuable 
articles  on  religious  institutions,  which  with  the  corre- 
sponding articles  in  Hastings'  "Dictionary"  largely 
supply  the  lack  of  a  Hebrew  Archaeology.  The  chief 
book  on  Old  Testament  Theology  is  by  Schultz,  but 
chis  is  now  rather  antiquated.  A.  B.  Davidson's  con- 
tribution to  the  "  International  Theological  Library " 
is  rather  a  series  of  studies  in  individual  doctrines 
than  a  Theology  of  the  Old  Testament.  The  "  Hib- 
bert  Lectures"  by  C.  G.  Montefiore,  "Old  Testament 
Theology  "  by  A.  Duff,  "  Hebrew  Religion  "  by  W.  E. 


172       SELECTED    LITERATURE 

Addis,  "The  Religion  of  Israel"  by  Otdey:  "The 
Religion  of  Israel  to  the  Exile  "  by  Budde  and  "  The 
Religion  of  Israel  after  the  Exile"  by  Cheyne,  "The 
Religion  of  Israel  among  the  Religions  of  the  Nearer 
East  "  by  Marti,  all  pursue  the  historical  method  followed 
in  the  present  work.  The  writer  may  refer  to  his  own 
"Problem  of  Suffering  in  the  Old  Testament"  and  his 
"  Commentary  on  Job "  for  a  fuller  treatment  of  the 
later  part  of  the  period  than  the  limits  of  space  permitted 
in  the  present  volume.  As  a  companion  to  this  work 
giving  a  topical  discussion  of  individual  doctrines  he 
would  recommend  the  little  "  Old  Testament  Theology  " 
by  C.  F.  Burney,  or  the  rather  larger  "Theology  of  the 
Old  Testament "  by  W.  H.  Bennett.  Of  special  value 
is  W.  R.  Smith's  "  Prophets  of  Israel." 


INDEX 


Aaron,  4,  17,  36 
Abihu,  17 
Abraham,  8,  135 
Adam,  135 
Agag,  32 
Agricultural  feasts,  35 

life,  30,  34  f.,  67 
Ahab,  45-49 
Ahaz,  62,  75  f.,  80 
Amaziah,  53 
Amos,  33  f.,  43,  45,  51-68,  70,  75, 

79 
Angels,  116,  127  f, ,  141  f. ,  161, 

164 
Anthropomcrphism,    17-19,     135, 

158 
Antiochus  Epiphanes,  143 
Apocalyptic,  127,  141-143 
Ark,  19-22,  36,  41,  44,  85 
Assyria,  6,  40,  49  f . ,  58,  60,  71, 

74.  75-78,  80,  82,  89,  92,  112, 

167 
Assyriologists,  6 
Athaliah,  69 
Azazel,  162 

Baal,  46,  67 

Baalim,  30-33,  35,  (i^  f. 

Babylon,  21,  76,  93,  104  f. ,  109, 

120  f. ,  125  f. ,  133 
Babylonia,  6,  46,  105  f.,  119,  125 
Bamoth,  36 


Baruch,  142 

Beersheba,  36 

Belshazzar,  143 

Bethel,  36,  52 

Bethlehem,  37,  52 

Beth-Shemesh,  16,  19 

Black  Stone  of  the  Kaaba,  20 

Book  of  the  Covenant,  26 

Wars  of  Yahweh,  17 
Budde,  13  ff.,  38,  41 

Canaan,  27  f. ,  67,  112 
Canaanites,   18,  28,   30  ff. ,  35  f . , 

42  f.,  68,  112 
Canon  of  the  Old  Testament,  87  f. 
Caphtor,  57 
Captivity  of  Judah,  80 
Carmel,  42 
Chaldea,  112 
Chaldeans,  95  f 
Chaos,  160 
Chemosh,  14 
Cheyne,  78 

Child-sacrifice,  83,  90,  112 
Circumcision,  2,  108,  135 
Clan  feast,  39 
Cyrus,  119  f.,  125 

Dan,  28,  37 

Daniel,  141,  143,  161,  163 

Danites,  37 

David,  16,  20,  42,  44  f. ,  59,  85 


174 


INDEX 


Day  of  Atonement,  162 
,,      Wrath,  90 

,,      Yahweh,  58,  71,  90^  130, 
133 
Death,  163  f. 

Deborah,  Song  of,  8,  28  f. 
Decalogue,  22-25 
Deluge,  160 

Deuteronomic  Law,  87,  88 
Deuteronomic    Reformation,    82- 

88,  91-94 
Deuteronomy,  Book  of,  85 
Dispersion,  78,  167 
Divine  Wisdom,  146 
Duhm,  78 

E,  14,  23,  24 

Ecclesiastes,  145,  152  f. 
Edom,  6,  130  f. ,  133,  140 

,,       King  of,  55 
Edomites,  131 
Egypt,  2  f.,  15,  57  74.  76 f.,  91  ff-. 

Ill  f. ,  169 
Egyptians,  3,  17,  96 
Egyptologists,  4 

Election  of  Israel,  5,  57,  72,  165  f. 
Elijah,  8,  42,  46  f. ,  49,  55.  69 
Elisha,  49,  69 
Elohim,  15,  161  f. 
Enoch.  142 

Ephraim,  6r,  65,  75,  80,  113 
Esau,  130 
Eschatological  passages  in  Isaiah, 

77 
Esther,  140 

Ethical  elements,  12,  64 
Exodus,  3,  12  f. ,  68,  134 
Ezekiel,  87,  107  f. ,  no-117,  121, 
127,  132 
,,       his  doctrine  of  God,  114- 

116 
,,       vision  of,  105 
Ezra,  130,  134,  136 


Fall,  the,  164 

Feast  of  unleavened  bread,  35 

,,       Tabernacles,  35 

,,       Yahweh,  36 
First-fruits,  40,  106 
Flood,  165 
Future  life,  148,  163  f. 

Gad,  28 

Genesis,  36,  134 

Gentiles,  123,  131,  140,  165,  l68 

Gog,  113 

Gomer,  61,  65 

Gomorrah,  18 

Greek  influence,  117 

Gunkel,  18 

Habakkuk,  8,  118  f. 

Hackmann,  78 

Haggai,  126  ff.,  130 

Hammurabi,  Code  of,  26 

Heathen  elements,  2,  67 

Hebrew  Canon,  87  f. 

Hexateuch,  19 

Hezekiah,  79,  81 

Horeb,  8,  17 

Hosea,  31,  35,  38,  51,  52-68,  69,  75 

Idolatry,  55,  73,  90,  104,  112, 
120,  132,  146 

Immanuel,  75 

Individualism,  98-102,  114-117 

Isaac,  40 

Isaiah,  62,  69-81,  82,  182 

,,       disputed  passages,  77  f. 
,,       foreign  policy  of,  75-77 
, ,       vision  of,  70  f. ,  94 
,,      Second,  105, 1 18-124, 125, 
138,  168 

J.  14.  23  f. 
Jehoahaz,  93 
Jehoiachin,  104,  107,  no 


INDEX 


175 


Jehoiakim,  87,  93 
Jehoshaphat,  47 
Jehu.  34,  49 
Jephthah's  daughter,  40 
Jeremiah,   34,    43,    82-102,    104, 
108,  no,  116,  137 
,,        vision  of,  91 
Jeroboam,  45 
Jeroboam  II.,  49,  60,  61 
Jerusalem,  44  f • .  73-  80,  82,  84  f., 

87,  94,  97,  100,  104,  107,  iioff. , 

125,  128,  130  {.,  133 
Jesse,  78 
Jethro,  13 
Joash,  49 

Job,  8,  86,  145-149.  159 
Jonadab,  34 
Jonah,  138  ff.,  168 
Jordan,  28,  44 
Joshua,  22 

Joshua  the  high  priest,  128  f. 
Josiah,  84,  87,  92  f. 
Judaism,  2,  107,  125-137,  153  f. 
Judges,  28,  30,  37 

Kenites,  6,  13-15 
Kir,  57 

Laish,  28,  37 

Law,  86 ff.,  93, 106, 136  f.,  165, 167 

,,     codification  of,  125 

,,     Priestly,  136 

,,     moral,  39 
Law-book,  84,  90,  92 
Levi,  36,  131 
Leviathan,  159 
Levites,  36  f. ,  114 
Leviticus,  134 
Lihth,  161 

Maccabean  struggle,  140 
Malachi,  38,  130  ff. 
Man,  Doctrine  of,  162  f. 


Manasseh,  80,  82,  89 

Marduk,  159 

Marriage,  6i-66,  131,  134,  164 

Marti,  78 

Megiddo,  92 

Melek,  83 

Melkart,  46,  49,  69 

Messiah,  78,  127,  140,  167 

Messianic  King,  129,  140,  167  f. 

passages,  78 
Micah,  37,  79 

disputed  passages,  79 
Micaiah,  4,  17  f. ,  48 
Michael,  162 
Moab,  6,  14,  55 
Mohammed,  20 
Moloch,  83 
Monarchy,  43 

Monotheism,  12,  39,  58,  86,  157 
Moses,  1-7,  13  ff.,  25  f.,  28,  36  f., 
135-  136 

N A BOTH, 47 

Nadab,  17 

Nahum,  89 

Nathan,  54 

National  unity,  28 

Nazirites,  32-34 

Nebuchadnezzar,  21,  143 

Neheniiah,  134 

New  Covenant,  96  ff.,  100,  102 

New  Jerusalem,  114 

Nineveh,  89,  139 

Noah,  135 

Nowack,  62 

Numbers,  134 

Old  Covenant,  97  f. 

Omri,  45 

Oppression  of  the  poor,  50,  53  f. , 

73,  130 
Origin  of  the  religion  of  Israel,  4 


176 


INDEX 


P,  14,  19.  32,  87,  134.  136,  159 
Palestine,  25  f. ,  31,  76,  78,  91,  106, 

125,  167 
Patriarchs,  14,  36,  135 
Patriotism,  5,  29,  41  f. ,  42,  49,  89 
Paul,  164 
Pentateuch,  4,  136 
Persian  Empire,  127 
Perversion  of  justice,  54,  90,  112 
Philistines,  19,  41,44,  57 
Phoenicians,  42  f. 
Priests,  36  f. ,  114,  130 
Primitive  religion,  2 
Prince  of  Peace,  167 
Prophecy,  41-43.  45-49.  138-144 
Prophets,  rise  of,  41 

false  and  true,  48 
Proverbs,  145  f. 
Psalms,  151 
Psalter,  153  ff. 

Queen  of  Heaven,  83 

Rahab,  159 

Rainbow,  9 

Rechabites,  34 

Reformation  of  Josiah,  84,  87,  92, 

94,  102,  106 
Rehoboam,  45,  67 
Religion,  individual,  99 
,,         national,  5,  99 

tribal,  38 
,,         universal,  5,  38,  105 
Remnant,  59  f. ,  jj,  134 
Restoration  of  Israel,  iii,  122 
Resurrection,  163 
Rites  connected  with  agriculture, 

30-32,  35 
Robertson  Smith,  9 

Sabbath,  106  f. ,  133,  135 
Sacrifice,    2,    39   f.,   57,   73,    106, 
131  ff. ,  135 


Samaria,  66,  69  f. ,  80,  112 
Samaritans,  132 
Samson,  32-34 
Samuel,  32 
Sanctuaries,  36,  59 
Sargon,  'jj 
Savage  elements,  2 
Satan,  the,  128,  146,  161  f. 
Saul,  16,  41-44 
Scythians,  89,  91 
Semitic  religion,  2,  9,  20,  25 
Sennacherib,  80,  85,  102 
Servant  of  Yahweh,  122  f. ,  127,  167 
passages,  120 
Shear- Jashub,  72 
Shechem,  36 
Sheol,  163 
Shewbread,  39 
Shiloh,  94 
Shinar,  129 
Simeon,  28,  36 
Sin,  164  f, 

Sinai,  7  f ,  13,  15  f . ,  18,  21,  31 
Sisera,  18,  29 
Sodom,  18,  112 
Solomon,  44  f. ,  145,  153 
Stade,  13 
State,  99  f. ,  116 
Syria,  49  f . ,  61,  75,  80,  127 
Syrians,  57 
Syrian  wars,  49 

Table  of  shewbread,  39 

Tables  of  the  Law,  21 

Temple,  70,  85,  93,  100,  102,  104, 

125  f.,  129,  131,  133,  136 
Temple,  Second,  156 
Temple  vessels,  95 
Tent  of  meeting,  22 
Theism,  153 
Tiamat,  159 
Tiglath  Pileser,  69 
Tyre,  46 


INDEX 


177 


Universalism,  38  f. 
Uzzah,  16,  20 
Uzziah,  69 


Vindicator, 
Volz,  78 


149 


Wellhausen,  59,  62 
Worship  of  family  deities,  46 
,,        ,,  foreign  deities,  46 

Yahweh,  angel  of,  128 

,,         character    of,    12,    55, 

57  f. .  84 
the    Creator,    10,    58, 
120,  158 


Yahweh,  His  glory,  iiof. ,  113, 121 
God  of  Israel,  4 
God     of    Nature     and 

History,  58 
holiness  of,  16,  71,    73, 
135.  153.  158 
,,        judgment  of,  90,  129 
,,        love  of,  63-66 
,,        meaning   of  the   name, 

6-12 
,,        Presence   of.   8,   20,  21, 
129,  139,  157 

Zechariah,  126-130 
Zephaniah,  90 
Zerubbabel,  126  f. ,  129 


Printed  by  Ballantyne,  Hanson  &"  Co. 
Edinburgh  <Sr»  London 


Princeton  The0l0gic.1l  Semmary-Speer 


1    1012  01145  8512 


W      1  -3fi 

t 

is'f'^- 


irtki****? 


